Charles F. Kennel is an American scientist and member of the United States National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

 born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Kennel received a bachelor's degree in astronomy from Harvard College and a doctorate in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University. He was advertised by NASA Watch as a potential pick by Barack Obama as the next NASA Administrator.

Career

Charles Kennel is a former Associate Administrator of NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

. 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

• Ninth Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography
  Scripps Institution of Oceanography
  Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, is one of the oldest and largest centers for ocean and earth science research, graduate training, and public service in the world...
  
  
• Vice Chancellor of Marine Sciences at the University of California
  University of California
  The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
  
  , San Diego, from 1998 to 2006.
• Member and chair of the NASA Advisory Council (1998–2006)
• Chair of the National Academy of Science's Space Studies Board

• In May 2009 Kennel was named a member of the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee
  Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee
  The Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee was a group reviewing the human spaceflight plans of the United States...
  
   an independent review requested by the Office of Science and Technology Policy
  Office of Science and Technology Policy
  The Office of Science and Technology Policy is an office in the Executive Office of the President , established by Congress on May 11, 1976, with a broad mandate to advise the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs.The director of this office is...
  
  (OSTP) on May 7, 2009.

Works

• 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 0195085299