Charles died in Maryland July 24, 2023.
Born June 13, 1932, he earned a bachelor of science degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1953. Working under John Archibald Wheeler, Charles earned a Ph.D. in physics at Princeton in 1957. A Sloan Fellowship enabled him to study at Niels Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. He joined the University of Maryland faculty in 1963, retiring in 2000.
Charles focused on general relativity, devising with Richard Arnowitt and Stanley Deser the ADM formalism, which earned them the American Physical Society Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics in 1994. He received the Einstein Medal in 2015. When Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne *65, and Barry Barish received the 2017 Nobel Prize for LIGO, Charles was quoted in Nature’s write-up.
In 1973, Charles was a co-author, with Wheeler and Thorne, of the textbook, Gravitation. Considered an authoritative opus, the book was updated and republished in 2017.
The Charles W. Misner Award, recognizing outstanding Ph.D. thesis work in gravitation and cosmology by a UMD graduate student, was established in his honor.
Predeceased by his wife, Susanne, Charles is survived by children Benedicte, Francis, Timothy, and Christopher ’87, and five grandchildren.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.