William Kerslake

Who is William Kerslake?

William Roy Kerslake is an American Olympic heavy weight wrestler and retired NASA engineer.

He won 15 national championships in a row in Freestyle and Greco-Roman. He won a gold medal in the 1955 Pan American Games and three times represented the United States in the Olympic Games, placing fifth, eighth and seventh from 1952 through 1960. His best result is that he ranked fifth at the freestyle wrestling event, heavyweight category, of the 1952 Summer Olympics. He was the first wrestler to be a member of three consecutive US Olympic wrestling teams. In the 1956 National Amateur Athletic Union Greco-Roman Championship in Tulsa, Oklahoma, William R. Kerslake achieved a record setting fastest pin, taking only 4 seconds to pin his heavy weight opponent Ralph Bartleman. This feat was captured in the 1986 Guinness Book of World Records in the sports section under “Fastest Pin in National Tournament Competition”.

Throughout his wrestling career, and afterward, he was an aerospace research engineer for NASA. He was the co-inventor of the first ion thruster for space propulsion and served as chairman of the technical committee of the AIAA.