The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has awarded Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Charles L. Bennett one of the oldest and most celebrated awards in science, the Rumford Prize, an honor Bennett now shares with Thomas Edison and the scientists that invented instant photography and the world’s first nuclear reactor.
In nominating Bennett for the award, the American Academy credited him with a singular achievement in advancing humankind’s understanding of the universe, writing “the single most significant experiment—the one that transformed our view of the Universe from a rough sketch to a remarkably precise picture—was the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe led by Chuck Bennett. “