Carl William Akerlof (born March 5, 1938) is an American particle physicist and astrophysicist. A professor of physics at the University of Michigan, Akerlof initiated and led the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE),[1] a ground-breaking effort to find fast astrophysical optical transients, particularly gamma-ray bursts. Akerlof has co-authored over 400 papers with 1500 collaborators, which have been cited over 6000 times.[2] He was elected in 1993 a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).