He is also the author of Spacetime, Geometry, Cosmology (ISBN 0-935702-01-6) (out of print but recently scanned into the Internet Archive), and of Applied differential geometry (ISBN 0-521-26929-6), a text expounding the virtues of differential forms over vector calculus for theoretical physics.
Born in Bennington, Vermont, Burke obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from Caltech in 1963.
His 1969 doctoral thesis, also at Caltech and supervised by Richard Feynman (chair), John Wheeler and Kip Thorne (3rd PhD student), was entitled The Coupling of Gravitational Radiation to Nonrelativistic Sources.
Burke is also known as the godfather of the Santa Cruz "Chaos Cabal" also known as the dynamical systems collective, that nurtured the seminal work of MacArthur Fellow Robert Shaw, Norman Packard, Doyne Farmer and James P. Crutchfield.
An avid hiker, climber, skier, sailor, wind surfer, and Go player, Bill Burke died from complications due to a cervical fracture sustained in an automobile accident.