William Cronk Elmore (September 16, 1909 – January 23, 2003) was an American physicist, educator, and author who is best known for his work on and related to the Manhattan project during World War II and as a professor of physics at Swarthmore College, PA from 1938 to 1974.

Bill Elmore authored two influential books during his life, Electronics-Experimental Techniques[1] with Matthew Sands and the Physics of Waves[2] with Mark Heald.

As a young man, Bill spent many of his days outside with his boy scout troop, experimenting with electronics and other technology, and building crystal radios.

At Trinity on July 16, 1945, Elmore observed the blast from the closest position of any observer, laying on a rubber mat beside J. Robert Oppenheimer behind a temporary wall of lead bricks and holding a piece of welding glass in front of his eyes.

[7] In 1946, Elmore and Matthew Sands wrote Electronics: Experimental Techniques, which was published in 1949 by McGraw-Hill as part of the National Nuclear Energy Series.

[1] This book covered pre-transistor electronics including advances developed by the United States' war-time Atomic Energy Program, and became a standard reference for post-war instrumentation, influencing a generation of science and engineering students in the 1950s.