Margaret Burbidge was born on 12 August 1919 in Davenport, Greater Manchester, England, UK. She was married to Geoffrey Burbidge. She died on 5 April 2020 in San Francisco, California, USA.
In 1957, she, her husband, Fred Hoyle, and William Fowler published a paper in the Reviews of Modern Physics which demonstrated how elements are synthesized in the nuclear reactors of stars. In 1983, Fowler received the Nobel Prize in physics for his role in the collaboration.