Awards & Winners

Charles L. Bennett

Charles L. Bennett is an American observational astrophysicist and the Alumni Centennial Professor of Physics and Astronomy and a Gilman Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. He is the Principal Investigator of NASA's highly successful Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. His National Academy of Sciences membership citation states, "As leader of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe mission, Bennett has helped quantify, with unprecedented precision and accuracy, many key properties of the universe, including its age, the dark and baryonic matter content, the cosmological constant, and the Hubble constant." Membership is a great honor bestowed upon the most distinguished scholars in engineering and the sciences. He was awarded the National Academy of Sciences Henry Draper Medal in 2005 and the Comstock Prize in Physics in 2009, both for his leadership of WMAP. Bennett received the Harvey Prize in 2006 for, "the precise determination of the age, composition and curvature of the universe." Bennett shared the 2010 Shaw Prize in astronomy with Lyman A. Page,Jr. and David N. Spergel, both of Princeton University, for their work on WMAP. The 2012 Gruber Cosmology Prize was awarded to "Charles L. Bennett and the WMAP Team" for "transforming our current paradigm of structure formation from appealing scenario into precise science." "By observing the relic radiation from the early universe, Charles L. Bennett and the WMAP team established the Standard Cosmological Model." Bennett was named the 2013 Karl G. Jansky Prize Lecturer.

Awards by Charles L. Bennett

Check all the awards nominated and won by Charles L. Bennett.

2009


Comstock Prize in Physics
(For his mapping of the cosmic microwave background and determining the universe's age, mass-energy content, geometry, expansion rate, and reionization epoch with unprecedented precision.)

2005


Henry Draper Medal
(For his contribution to the precise determination of the age, composition, and curvature of the universe through his leadership of NASA's WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) cosmic microwave background mission.)