Professor Charles L Bennett was born in Rutgers，New Jersey 1956. He received a PhD in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. He is currently a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University and a Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

The Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2010 is awarded in equal shares to Charles L Bennett, Lyman A Page Jr and David N Spergel for their leadership of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) experiment, which has enabled precise determinations of the fundamental cosmological parameters, including the geometry, age and composition of the universe.