BURBIDGE REACHES EVENT HORIZON
Astronomer Margaret Burbidge has died aged 100. Known for her work in the 1960s on discovering quasars (supermassive black holes for you Muse fans), she also created the Faint Object Spectograph (a super-magnifier for detecting gamma rays and wavelengths) on the Hubble Space Telescope. Claiming the World War Two blackouts made researching astronomy easier, Burbidge avoided V2 bombs (literally) to become an acclaimed name in her field. Despite this, she was snubbed for the 1983 Nobel Prize, when a bunch of American guys won it for her original work. This was not the first slight against Burbidge, who was turned down for her original PHD in the 1940s as Carnegie had made several of its observatories male only. She continued to fight against discrimination as she became the first ever female President of the American Astronomical Society, and had an asteroid named after her. An asteroid beats a Nobel Prize any day, surely. She has died after a fall, and so Mercarte and Decaying Orbit-uaries get the points.
Margaret Burbidge
12 August 1919 – 5 April 2020
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