Contact:

Nancy Neal
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md
(Phone: 301-286-0039)

March 10, 2004 - RELEASE: 04-18

NASA SCIENTIST NOMINATED FOR WIRED MAGAZINES SCIENTIST OF THE YEAR

Dr. Charles L. Bennett from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md will find out on March 15 whether he has won WIRED Magazine's Rave Award for scientist of the year. The award is a celebration of innovation and is given to innovators who are "The People Changing People's Mind."

"I am honored and surprised at being nominated, especially in the company of such renown scientists," said Dr. Bennett.

Other nominees in the category include such prestigious names as: Patrick Brown, Michael Eisen, Harold Varmus Biology, Public Library of Science; Boldizsar Janko Physics, University of Notre Dame; Craig Venter The Center for the Advancement of Genomics; and Alessandro Vespignani Theoretical Physics, Universite Paris-Sud

On March 15, 2004, Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson and Publisher Drew
Schutte will unveil the winners at the Rave Awards Gala at The Fillmore in San Francisco.

Bennett is the Principal Investigator for NASA's revolutionary mission, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, which took the most famous "baby picture" of all; that of our very own universe. The image contains stunning detail of the universe just after the big bang. Scientists captured the afterglow of the big bang and revealed that the universe is 13.7 billion years old and dominated by a mysterious dark energy. The confirmation of the dark energy, which drives the universe to expand at an ever increasing rate, was hailed by Science magazine as the 2003 Breakthrough of the Year.

"By measuring light that's over 13 billion years old, the WMAP space mission is, in WIRED words, 'Changing your mind' by revealing the beginnings of the universe," Dr. Bennett explained.

WMAP launched on June 30 aboard a Delta II rocket and is in its permanent orbiting station of L2, some million miles away from Earth. WMAP was produced in partnership between Princeton University, N.J. and Goddard. Goddard and Princeton University produced the WMAP hardware and software. In addition to Goddard and Princeton, science team members are located at the University of Chicago, the University of California, Los Angeles, Brown University, Providence, R.I., and the University of the British of Columbia, Vancouver.

WMAP, an Explorer mission, is managed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for NASA's Office of Space Science.

In his position as Principal Investigator, Bennett led the proposal effort and was responsible for the mission design and development, ongoing mission operations, data analysis, and production of the scientific results.

Prior to this, Bennett served as branch head of the Infrared Astrophysics Branch in the space science directorate at NASA. Bennett also held the title of Deputy Principal Investigator of the Differential Microwave Radiometers (DMR) instrument and participated as a science team member on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE).

Bennett has been the recipient of numerous awards. For his work on COBE, Bennett was awarded NASA's highest scientific honor, the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award. In 1999, Bennett was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was presented NASA's Leadership Award. In 2002, he was named the most Highly Cited Researcher in space science worldwide by ISI, an information company. In 2003, he received the John C. Lindsay Award for Space Science, and was honored as the 2003 Alumnus of the Year by the Physics Department of the University of Maryland. He was recently named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

A native of New Brunswick, N.J. but raised in Bethesda, Md., Bennett graduated from the University of Maryland in 1978 with a bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy. He received a Ph.D in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in 1984.

Bennett is the son of Maryland residents Lawrence and Devora Bennett. Bennett and his wife, Renee Marlin-Bennett, reside in Bethesda with their two sons.

More information on WMAP and the WIRED Rave awards is available on the Internet at:
http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov
http://www.raveawards.com/nominees.html