Charles Misner: A Celebration of Memories

Summary

In the Introduction to this volume we began with an appreciation of Charles Misner as a scholar and an educator, and we felt that it would be fitting to end it with a selection of reminiscences that would allow us to show something of Charlie Misner the man and the teacher. Few of the readers of this book in the year that it is published will not know the dry facts of his life, but since all books are at least a reach for immortality, we should consider the reader who may see it long after all of us are dust and give him or her the framework of a life on which so many memories rest.

Charles was born on June 13, 1932, attended Notre Dame University from 1948 to 1952, and received his Ph.D. from Princeton, where his advisor was John Wheeler, in 1957. He married Susanne Kemp in 1959 and has four children. From 1956 to 1963 he was an Instructor and then an Assistant Professor at Princeton. Since 1963 he has been on the faculty of the University of Maryland. He has been a visiting faculty member in universities and institutes throughout the United States and Europe. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Royal Astronomical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, the Association of Mathematical Physicists, the American Mathematical Society, the International Astronomical Union, the Philosophy of Science Association and the Federation of American Scientists.