Charles L. Bennett has been a Professor of Physics and Astronomy on the Homewood campus of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland since January 2005. Prior to this, he was a Senior Scientist for Experimental Cosmology, Goddard Senior Fellow, and Infrared Astrophysics Branch Head at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Dr. Bennett leads the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mission as its Principal Investigator (P.I.). WMAP was competitively selected in 1996 as a NASA medium-class Explorer (MIDEX) mission. WMAP was launched June 2001 and its first scientific results were issued in February 2003. WMAP quantified the age, content, history, and other key properties of the universe with unprecedented accuracy and precision. This was recognized by Science magazine as the 2003 "Breakthrough of the Year."

Previous to his work on WMAP, Dr. Bennett was the Deputy P.I. of the Differential Microwave Radiometers (DMR) instrument and a member of the Science Team of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission. The scientific results from this work included the first detection of variations across the sky of the temperature of the afterglow radiation from the Big Bang, the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Dr. Bennett has received several awards and honors, including the 2006 Harvey Prize, the 2005 Henry Draper Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, and the John C. Lindsay Award from NASA. He received the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal twice (once for COBE and once for WMAP), and the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal . He shared in the 2006 Gruber Cosmology Prize, awarded to John Mather and the COBE Team.

Dr. Bennett is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). In 2002, he was named the most Highly Cited Researcher in space science worldwide by ISI, an information company. In 2003, he was honored as the 2003 Alumnus of the Year by the Physics Department of the University of Maryland. Dr. Bennett served on the organizing committees of several scientific meetings, and has spoken internationally on various aspects of experimental cosmology.

Dr. Bennett received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. He received his B.S. degree in Physics and Astronomy, cum laude with High Honors in Astronomy, from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1978. He was also a summer trainee Fellow of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism from 1976 to 1978. He is a member of American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Astronomical Society, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the International Astronomical Union, and Sigma Xi.