orig. Eleanor Margaret Peachey
born Aug. 12, 1919, Davenport, Cheshire, Eng.
English astronomer.
She served as acting director (1950–51) of the Observatory of the University of London. In 1955 her husband, Geoffrey Burbidge (b. 1925), became a researcher at the Mount Wilson Observatory, and she accepted a research post at Caltech. She later joined the faculty at UC–San Diego, briefly serving as director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory (1972–73). Jointly with her husband, she made notable contributions to the theory of quasar s and to the understanding of how the elements are formed in the depths of stars through nuclear fusion ( nucleosynthesis ).