William L. Burke (1941-96) was an astronomy, astrophysics, and physics professor at University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of two books: Spacetime, Geometry, Cosmology and Applied Differential Geometry. Burke gained his baccalaureate at California Institute of Technology in 1963. His doctorate was supervised by leading physicists Richard Feynman and John Wheeler. Burke discovered an aspect of gravitation overlooked by Einstein, which was named the Burke Potential. He became a full professor at UCSC in 1988. A rising star of the new physics, his life was cut short by injuries suffered from an automobile accident.