Margaret Burbidge
Margaret Burbidge was born in 1919 in Davenport and is currently still alive. SHe attended the University of London and got her Ph.D. there in 1943. She began to research galaxies by linking a spectrograph to telescopes. In 1951, she went to the United States to the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin where she had a grant. There she studied B stars and and galaxy structure. In 1953, she returned to England and researched alongside her husband, Fred Hoyle and William Alfred Fowler and came up with the B2FH theory. This theory showed how all of the elements except the very lightest are produced by nuclear reactions in stellar interiors. For this finding, they received the Warner Prize in 1959. Burbidge was admitted to the Mount Wilson Observatory, pretending to be her husband's assistance. When they realized, they eventually let her stay and continue her research. In the 1960's Burbidge obtained spectra of spiral galaxies. From these, the velocities of the ionized gas clouds in their nuclei and disks were measured. She, in collaboration with Geoff Burbidge and with Kevin Prendergast, ultimately deduced rotational properties and masses for 50 or so spiral galaxies. In 1972, she obtained directorship of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, which she held for 15 months. She became one of the foremost attackers of discrimination against women in the field of astronomy. In 1976, she became president of the American Astronomy Society. For the past 15 years, Burbidge has continued her observational research programs at the Lick Observatory of the University of California.
Works Cited
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Burbidge
http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/bruceMedalists/BurbidgeM/index.html
http://www.cirs-tm.org/researchers/researchers.php?id=150
William Rutter Dawes was a British astronomer who was born in 1799. As a young man, Dawes trained at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London to become a physician. In 1826, he moved to Liverpool, where he took up an interest in Astronomy. He then became heavily influenced by Rev. Thomas Waffles, which resulted in Dawes taking charge of a small congregation in Ormskirk. In 1929, he returned to his astronomical studies and began to investigate binary stars. Through his studies, Dawes was able to improve upon Sir John Herschel's observations on double stars by refining his 3.8 inch Dolland refractor telescope. Therefore, he was able to collect more accurate data about binaries. He was often nicknamed "eagle eye." Due to bad health and his wife's death, in 1839 Dawes gave up his congregation and moved to London. There he became an assistant to George Bishop in his private observatory. Bishop allowed Dawes to use this observatory, which included a 7 inch refractor telescope, until 1844. He then moved to Kent and was able to build his own personal observatory with 6.5 inch Merz refractor. With this telescope, Dawes helped to discover Saturn's crepe ring. In 1855, he won the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and in 1864 he made detailed drawings of Mars during its opposition. These drawings helped Richard Anthony Proctor make a map of Mars in 1867. Because of his work concerning Mars, craters on both Mars and the Moon are named after Dawes, as well as the optical phenomenon called the Dawes limit. In 1865 he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society and died just a short 4 years later in Haddenham.
