Obituary: Geoffrey Burbidge, Astronomer

A large man with an even larger voice, he was one of the last surviving giants of the post-war era of astronomy, when big telescopes were sprouting on mountain peaks, revealing a universe more diverse and violent than anybody had dreamed.

He was also, to the consternation of most of his colleagues, a witty and acerbic critic of the Big Bang theory.

In 1957, in a groundbreaking paper in The Reviews of Modern Physics, Burbidge, his wife Margaret, William Fowler of the California Institute of Technology and Fred Hoyle of Cambridge University – a collaboration noted by their initials B2FH – laid out the way thermonuclear reactions in stars could slowly seed a universe that was originally pure hydrogen, helium and lithium – the simplest elements in the periodic table – with heavier elements such as oxygen, iron, carbon and others from which life is derived.

Stars like the Sun burn hydrogen into helium to generate heat and light until they run out of fuel, or so the story goes. But more massive stars can go on to ignite helium to produce carbon and oxygen and so forth. Eventually, the star explodes, tossing the newly minted atoms into space, where they mix with gas and dust and are incorporated into future stars. Successive generations of stars that coalesce from cosmic dust, burn and then explode would thus make the universe ever richer in heavy elements.

Allan Sandage of Carnegie Observatories, an old friend of Burbidge's, once explained it this way: "Every one of our chemical elements was once inside a star. The same star. You and I are brothers. We came from the same supernova." Or as the singer Joni Mitchell put it: "We are stardust."

In a recent interview, Dr Sandage described the B2FH work as "one of the major papers of the century." He said: "It changed the whole landscape of the chemical evolution of the universe."

Geoffrey Ronald Burbidge was born in 1925, the only child of a builder and a milliner.

He attended the University of Bristol intending to study history, but, discovering he could stay longer if he enrolled in physics, he did, and found he liked it. He furthered his studies at University College, London, from which he received a PhD in theoretical physics in 1951. Another turning point came when he befriended a recent PhD, Margaret Peachey, on a lecture course. An assistant director of the university's observatory at the time, she would become a prominent astronomer in her own right. They wed in 1948.

It was under his wife's influence that Burbidge became interested in the physics of stars, tagging along on observation trips as her assistant. He always joked that he had become an astronomer by marrying one.

On occasion, the roles switched. Margaret's application to observe on Mount Wilson, the mountain overlooking Pasadena, California, where modern cosmology began, was turned down on the grounds there was no separate women's bathroom. Burbidge booked the telescope time himself and his wife posed as his assistant.

After stops at Harvard, the University of Chicago and Cambridge, Dr Fowler arranged for the Burbidges and Dr Hoyle to go to Pasadena to complete the stellar nucleosynthesis work, for which Dr Fowler was later awarded a Nobel Prize. Margaret obtained a post at the California Institute of Technology, while Geoffrey got a job at the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories. After another stop, at the University of Wisconsin, the Burbidges landed at the University of California in 1962.

In 1990 Burbidge and four other astronomers, including Dr Hoyle, published a broadside in the journal Nature listing arguments against the Big Bang. Burbidge preferred a version of Dr Hoyle's Steady State theory of an eternal universe. In this version, small, local big bangs originating in the nuclei of galaxies every 20 billion years or so kept the universe boiling. To his annoyance, most other astronomers ignored this view.

Despite his contrarian ways on this and other subjects, Burbidge maintained his credibility in the astronomical establishment, editing the prestigious Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics for more than 30 years.

Burbidge never lost what Dr Strittmatter called a "rebel's instinct".

Dr Sandage said Burbidge had called him up three times a week for 40 years to argue about the Big Bang. "He delighted in bringing up all the details that didn't quite fit," Dr Sandage said. In recent years, as the evidence for the Big Bang mounted, Burbidge held his ground. "I just didn't understand that," Dr Sandage said. "I often wondered if he was just arguing with me to keep on the phone."

Geoffrey Burbidge is survived by his wife, a daughter and a grandson.