Geoffrey Burbidge

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Geoffrey Ronald Burbidge (born September 24, 1925) is a British-American physics professor in the University of California, San Diego. He is married to Margaret Burbidge.

In 1957 he and his wife were co-authors, together with Fred Hoyle, the British astronomer, and William Fowler, the American physicist, of a famous paper on stellar nucleosynthesis, which was referred to as the B²FH paper, after the initials of the surnames of the four authors. Burbidge is known mostly for his alternative cosmology theory, which contradicts the Big Bang theory.

According to Burbidge, the universe is oscillatory and as such expands and contracts periodically over infinite time. This theory, due to its controversial nature, has brought a certain amount of fame (or even infamy) to Burbidge. He is mostly regarded as a highly-respected gadfly, and it is thought that he relishes this description. He was the Director of Kitt Peak National Observatory from 1978 to 1984.

[edit] Honors

Awards

• Warner Prize, with his wife (1959)
• Bruce Medal (1999)
• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (2005)
• National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Reviewing (2007)

Named after him

• Asteroid 11753 Geoffburbidge

[edit] External links

• Bruce Medal page
• Geoffrey Burbidge personal page
• Editor of The Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics[1] from 1974 to 2004