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Geoff Burbidge RIP

By catdynamics on January 28, 2010.

Another loss to cosmology, as Geoff Burbidge dies at 84.

Geoff Burbidge was a major figure in the early days of cosmology.

Best known for his B2FH paper on stellar nucleosynthesis, he later became an advocate of Steady State Cosmology with Fred Hoyle, and aggressively skeptical of the cosmological origin of the redshift of quasars.

I last saw Prof. Burbidge at one of the Carnegie Millennial meetings and was reminded how extraordinarily sharp he was, and the breadth of his knowledge of the details of astrophysical phenomena, as he quizzed a number of the speakers on the their assumptions and conclusions.

Here is an interview with Burbidge on non-Big Bang cosmology.
It is presented without endorsement - I don't agree with Geoff's cosmological views, but he did not come by them trivially and it is good to be tested by experts.

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astro

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