Charles F. Kennel (born August 20, 1939) is an American plasma physicist and former Associate Administrator of NASA.[1][2] He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences[3] and won the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics in 1997.[4] In 2009, he was advertised by NASA Watch as a potential pick by Barack Obama as the next NASA Administrator.[5]

Charles F. Kennel
Born (1939-08-20) August 20, 1939 (age 85)
NationalityAmerican
EducationHarvard College (A.B.)
Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPlasma physics
InstitutionsNASA, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCLA
Thesis Low-frequency stability of spatially non-uniform plasmas  (1964)
Doctoral advisorEdward A. Frieman
Doctoral studentsMary Hudson

Early life and career

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Kennel received a bachelor's degree in astronomy from Harvard College and a doctorate in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University. His doctoral thesis was advised by Edward A. Frieman.[1][6]

Charles Kennel was a former Associate Administrator of NASA. He was the director of Mission to Planet Earth, a program during the Clinton Administration to perform a comprehensive survey and observation of our home planet. He was a member and chair of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Science Committee which he quit in 2006.[7]

Honors and awards

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Kennel was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987[11] and was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1991.[3] He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2003.[12] In 1997, he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics from the American Physical Society.[4]

Works

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  • Unstable growth of unducted whistlers propagating at an angle to the geomagnetic field – 1966 – Trieste : International Atomic Energy Agency, International Centre for Theoretical Physics
  • What we have learned from the magnetosphere – 1974 – Los Angeles, Calif. : Plasma Physics Group, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Matter in motion : the spirit and evolution of physics – 1977 – Charles F. Kennel and Ernest S. Abers – Boston : Allyn and Bacon
  • Convection And Substorms: Paradigms Of Magnetospheric Phenomenology – 1996 – Oxford University Press, Usa – ISBN 0-19-508529-9
  • The Climate Threat We Can Beat, in May/June 2012 Foreign Affairs with David G. Victor, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, and Kennel (website is paid while article is current)

References

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Preceded by Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography
1998–2006
Succeeded by