[BURBIDGE, Margaret – her copy], MAXWELL, E.A., Geometry for Advanced Pupils (The Clarendon Press, Oxford), 1949

8vo; pp. 176

Very good condition

Margaret Burbidge’s copy of this scarce and important work on pure geometry.

This volume was probably acquired by Burbidge after her return to England. She had trained and then taught at ucl, and then from 1951 spent two years at the Yerkes Observatory, Wisconsin, before returning to the University of Cambridge to conduct research with her husband Geoffrey Burbidge, William Fowler and Fred Hoyle. This resulted in the monumental ‘B2FH’ paper of 1957, which for the first time described the physics of ‘stellar nucleosynthesis’, i.e. the origin of all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

From 1959 her researched turned towards the geometry of distant galaxies – over a period of many years Burbidge and her collaborators analyzed the ‘rotation curves’ of many galaxies, developing key insights and techniques, and adding crucial evidence to the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. This work therefore helped shape the work of one of the greats of 20th-century astrophysics.