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She has been a president of the American Astronomical Society and Director of the Greenwich Royal Observatory. She was the first women who is an astronomer to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Working with her husband, Geoffrey Burbidge, and Fred Hoyle, and William Alfred Fowler she developed in 1957 the theory now called B2FH. This theory showed the famous result that all of the elements except the very lightest are produced by nuclear processes inside stars. In 1972 she turned down the Annie J. Cannon Award of the American Astronomical Society because it was awarded to women only saying "It is high time that discrimination in favor of, as well as against, women in professional life be removed". Currently she is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego.