Willard Bennett was an American physicist noted for his contributions to several areas of physics, including plasma physics, astrophysics, geophysics, surface physics, and physical chemistry.

Bennett was born in Ohio in 1903, and studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin before receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1928. He was elected to a National Research Fellowship in Physics, and in 1928-29 studied at the California Institute of Technology. In 1930 Bennett returned to his native state to join the Physics faculty at Ohio State University.

In the 1930s Bennett did pioneering research in plasma physics--the study of gases ionized by high-frequency electricity. In 1934 he discovered the pinch effect, a electromagnetic phenomena that has important implications for plasmas at very high temperatures.

André Ampère demonstrated that parallel electric currents in a wire having the same direction attract one another through...