William Morris Kinnersley

Who is William Morris Kinnersley?

William Morris Kinnersley is an American physicist who is well known for his contributions to general relativity.

Kinnersley earned his Ph.D. from Caltech in 1968, under the direction of Kip Thorne. In 1969 he published the famous Kinnersley photon rocket, an exact null dust solution to the Einstein field equation which represents a massive object which accelerates from the recoil of massless radiation which it emits. This solution remains one of the few known exact solutions with clear physical interpretations, and in consequence it is widely cited as an important breakthrough. In 1978, Kinnersley, C. Hoenselaers, and Basilis C. Xanthopoulos published an important solution generating method for solving the Einstein field equation.