Willard Harrison Bennett (born 13.06.1903) is an American physicist. He was born in Findlay. He graduated from Ohio State University (1924) and the University of Wisconsin (1926). In 1926-28 he worked at the University of Michigan, in 1928-30 at the California Institute of Technology, in 1930-38 at Ohio State University and in 1946-50 at the National Bureau of Standards; in 1950-51 he was professor at the University of Arkansas, and in 1951-61 head of a branch of the Naval Research Laboratory. In 1961-76 he was professor at North Carolina State University.
His work was in the fields of spectroscopy, accelerator technology, plasma physics and space physics. Independently of L. Tonks, while studying streams of fast charged particles in a gas-discharge plasma, he predicted (1934) the phenomenon of the compression of a plasma by the magnetic field of the current flowing through it (the pinch effect) and derived the equation describing the conditions under which the gas-kinetic pressure of the plasma becomes equal to the magnetic pressure of the field of the current (the Bennett relation).
He developed the principle of the tandem accelerator and built a model of it. He constructed a non-magnetic spectrometer for space research and a laboratory model of the radiation belts before their discovery in space. Independently of E. K. Zavoisky he pointed out the possibility of achieving thermonuclear fusion using intense relativistic electron beams (1954).