Bethesda, Md. resident Charles L. Bennett was elected in November to Fellowship in the American Physical Society, Division of Astrophysics. Bennett received this honor for leading a team that discovered tiny temperature variations in the afterglow of the Big Bang, and for leading the space mission team to measure the pattern of these variations that encode information on the content, history and fate of the universe.

A special fellowship committee, consisting of three to five senior members in the field of astrophysics, meets to review the fellowship nominations. The Council has ultimate authority to approve the committee's recommendations. It is a tedious process that takes nearly a year and three levels of review. Only one half of one percent, or 200 of the Society's 41,000 (approximate) members, are elected to Fellowship each year.

Bennett came to work for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. in 1984 and currently serves as head of the Infrared Astrophysics Branch. Some of his other accomplishments include serving as lead for both the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) space mission team and Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) space mission team. He was bestowed with NASA's highest scientific honor - the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award - in 1992 and received the Agency's Leadership Award in 1999.

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

He is the son of Lawrence and Devora Bennett of Bethesda and the son-in-law of Irving and Rhoda Marlin of Orange County, Calif. Bennett and his wife, Renée Marlin-Bennett, reside in Bethesda with their two sons, Andrew and Ethan.