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For the record, the Director of Mt. Wilson Observatory in 1948 was Ira Sprague Bowen ( https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4524-2) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/science/space/e-margaret-burbidge-dead.html
The AIP Interview with Margaret Burbidge is here: https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/25487
Burbidge's education was funded by her father's invention of the Peachey process for the vulcanisation of rubber at low temperature. Here's an early reference to the process from the year before Margaret was born: https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/images/5/51/JD_Hooley.jpg
The transcription on the interview is amusing. Whitson for Whitsun. [The concept needs to be clarified for the interviewer.] Lewis for Lewes. [Understandable.] Klinburne for Glyndebourne.
Code is running. So I'm going through the Burbidge interview and found something that might interest @histoftech. Burbidge quit a job with Leslie Comrie's Scientific Computing Service, Ltd. after one day because she thought Comrie "had designs on me."
Neat bit about Burbidge teaching Arthur C. Clarke's astronomical observing class. Clarke was, of course, more interested in planetary than stellar astronomy.
Ah, here's the quote, "Well, anyway, I got a very nasty letter back from I. S. Bowen, who was the director." [The letter's location was not then known, but may have spent some time in Chipping Norton.]
So many of the common themes of early career academic life for women today come up in this interview, including the "living apart from your spouse, because you found temporary positions 600 miles apart."
Burbidge surprises the interview by mentioning the now much better documented conflict between Urey and Kuiper...
plus ça change: "Well, I didn't mind that so much. What I bitterly resented was having to pay what Redman called "bench fees" to use the spectral measuring equipment. He charged me. I think it was only 5 pounds a term. But he charged me!"
So B^2FH pretty much happens because the Burbidges can solve their 2 body problem to live in Cambridge on Geoff's salary while Margaret is "volunteer research associate" at Cambridge and paying 5 pounds a term to measure spectra.
William Fowler (F) is just visiting Cambridge, gets Margaret a job at Caltech, while Geoff gets the Carnegie fellowship for which Margaret was rejected.
Margaret on her Caltech job: "And it was nominally part time, but of course as all the women astronomers have done who have ever been on 'part time' positions we worked full time and were paid part time."
Fowler's perspective starts at p. 139 here: http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu/94/1/OH_Fowler_W.pdf
Oh, oh. Here comes I.S. Bowen. Fowler finds it a funny story. But it's not, of course. Fowler thought Margaret should have the Carnegie and Geoff work for him. But Bowen said there were no toilet facilities for women at Mt. Wilson. Fowler told Margaret this...
Margaret said, "I'll use the bushes." So basically, I.S. Bowen rejected Margaret Burbidge twice, the second time despite knowing that she likely held the keys to nucleosynthesis of the heavy elements.
Of course, Burbidge still managed to observe at Mt. Wilson on the sly, staying in the unheated Kapteyn Cottage, possibly while pregnant. And here we hear who else did not want women at Mt. Wilson.
"Oh, I think Paul Merrill also. All the old guard, what I would call the old guard. Not Baade, of course. Baade thought it was all nonsense and so did Minkowski." And thus, probably Hubble.
Ah, yes, observing while pregnant and having to conceal it, because the Burbidges were worried about the research assistants getting "all up tight and fussy." "So observing clothes will hide a multitude of sins." [I bet this happens today because of insurance concerns.]
The research assistants' wives were annoyed not knowing. But it seems as if the research assistants were generally supportive of her work. I mean, who wouldn't be? Margaret was former second assistant of Mill Hill. She was a very experienced observer at all prestige levels.
They were kicked out of their apartment after the baby came. [What a different era!] They moved around the corner from where I used to live, in a since-demolished building on the block of S. Chester just north of Del Mar.
Child care c. 1956: "Yes, we had the wife of a graduate student, a Norwegian couple. They had a small girl and they had a struggle to live on what they had. So they used to come around. The wife and her very small girl used to come around to our house, during the daytime."
And when the Burbidges were observing as well...
So Roger Revelle offers them both TT positions at UCSD. But they are worried that Margaret won't be able to get telescope time at Palomar or Mt. Wilson. So Geoff takes a TT position at Chicago and Margaret a fellowship (because Chicago has nepotism rules).
Shoutout to Juan Carrasco of 4171 Carrasco fame ( https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/longtime-palomar-observatorytelescope-operator-dies-787), who must have been terrified when Margaret fell off a platform at McDonald when he was helping her observe.
Um, Kuiper was putting grants in under other people's names? This is a twist.
I obviously know nothing about the history of astronomy at my alma mater.
Again, one advantage of observing at Kitt Peak were childcare arrangements.
Revelle gets UCSD access to Lick, thereby managing to entice the Burbidges to take TT positions. Margaret is nominally in chemistry to avoid nepotism rules but told to prioritize physics service over chemistry.
This arrangement ended mysteriously in 1964 soon after Margaret was elected FRS.
You'll have to read in detail for Margaret's account of her time as Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Geoff ended up being driven out by the union...how very 1970s UK.
Nice discussion near the end about why the AAS needed an Executive Officer.
Oh, and another interesting discussion about Black representation in astronomy. I think Margaret's AAS Presidency was a very good one.
But her proudest scientific work in the end was B^2FH. Fin.
