Lady Stardust was a star of astrophysics
6 November 2020
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Margaret Burbidge found her calling early.
Margaret Burbidge, named by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as “one of the most influential astrophysicists of her time”, died on 5 April this year. She was 100 years old.
Among the many stories told about her remarkable life, one of the best is also one of the earliest. In a 1978 interview with the American Institute of Physics, she recounts how her “fascination” with the stars began at age four when she became seasick while on a night crossing of the English Channel with her family, on the way to France for a holiday.
“To take my mind off that, I was lifted up to look out of the porthole on the upper bunk to see the stars,” she says.
For a child growing up in foggy London, the sight of the stars at sea was amazing. “You know how they are at sea, on a clear night,” she says. “These twinkling lights then became another fascination to me, tracking down any kind of twinkling light and enjoying twinkling lights.”
This fascination with stars, and her groundbreaking work in astronomy and spectroscopy – the analysis of starlight by wavelength – led to her being nicknamed Lady Stardust.
More:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/lady-stardust-was-a-star-of-astrophysics/
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