| Charles F. Kennel | |
| Birth Date: | 20 August 1939 |
| Birth Place: | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Nationality: | American |
| Fields: | Plasma physics |
| Workplaces: | NASA, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCLA |
| Education: | Harvard College (A.B.) Princeton University (Ph.D.) |
| Thesis Title: | Low-frequency stability of spatially non-uniform plasmas |
| Thesis1 Url: | and |
| Thesis2 Url: | )--> |
| Thesis Year: | 1964 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Edward A. Frieman |
| Doctoral Students: | Mary Hudson |
| Awards: | |
| Partners: | )--> |
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 and won the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics in 1997. In 2009, he was advertised by NASA Watch as a potential pick by Barack Obama as the next NASA Administrator.[3]
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.[4]
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.[5]
Kennel was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987[9] and was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1991.[10] He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2003.[11] In 1997, he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics from the American Physical Society.[12]