Charles William Misner (/ˈmɪsnər/; June 13, 1932 – July 24, 2023) was an American physicist and one of the authors of Gravitation.

His dissertation, Outline of Feynman Quantization of General Relativity; Derivation of Field Equations; Vanishing of the Hamiltonian, was completed under John Wheeler.

Prior to completing his Ph.D., Misner joined the faculty of the Princeton Physics Department with the rank of Instructor (1956–1959), and was subsequently promoted to assistant professor (1959–1963).

Most of Misner's research fell into the area of general relativity, which describes the gravitational interactions of very massive bodies.

This set of equations, known as the ADM formalism, plays a role in some attempts to unify quantum mechanics with general relativity.