[1] He was born on 18 May 1831 at Kenilworth, the only son of Samuel Burbury of Clarendon Square, Leamington, by Helen his wife.
[2] While engaged in legal work Burbury pursued with much success advanced mathematical study, chiefly in collaboration with his Cambridge friend, Henry William Watson.
Together they wrote the treatises, The Application of Generalised Co-ordinates to the Kinetics of a Material System (Oxford, 1879) and The Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism (2 vols.
Oxford, 1885—9), in which the endeavour was made to carry on the researches of Clerk Maxwell and to place electrostatics and electromagnetism on a more formal mathematical basis.
[2] Among many papers which Burbury contributed independently to the 'Philosophical Magazine' were those 'On the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in Connection with the Kinetic Theory of Gases' (1876) and 'On a Theorem in the Dissipation of Energy' (1882).