Margaret Burbidge est née le 12 août 1919 à Grand Manchester, Angleterre, Royaume-Uni. Elle était mariée à Geoffrey Burbidge. Elle est morte le 5 avril 2020 en Californie, États-Unis.
In 1957, she, her husband, Fred Hoyle, and William Fowler published a paper in the Reviews of Modern Physics which demonstrated how elements are synthesized in the nuclear reactors of stars. In 1983, Fowler received the Nobel Prize in physics for his role in the collaboration.