Bernard F. Burke was William A. M. Burden Professor of Astrophysics, formerly of the Radio Astronomy Group of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Research Laboratory of Electronics, and principal investigator at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. He was elected a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1970, and served as the American Astronomical Society (AAS) President from 1986 to 1988. He and Kenneth Franklin discovered Jupiter as a source of radio waves while working at the Carnegie Institution for Science; and he was part of the 6-member team credited with the 1988 discovery of the first Einstein ring.