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Ärende: James van Allen RIP
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From: "John Beamish" <JLBeamish@rogers.com>

http://www.crgazette.com/2006/08/09/Home/vanallen.htm

Space physicist James Van Allen dies Published: 08/09/2006   09:53 AM Updated:
08/09/2006   10:58 AM
By:
Tom Walsh  -  Special to The Gazette

IOWA CITY, IA - University of Iowa space physicist James A. Van Allen died this
morning at University Hospitals. He was 91.

      Van Allen was internationally renowned for 60 years of pioneering
involvement in space physics research. He designed the scientific instrument
carried into space by America's first satellite, Explorer 1.

    Launched on Jan. 31, 1958, Explorer 1 was the U.S. response to Sputnik.
The world's first satellite, Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union on Oct.
4, 1957.

    Instruments aboard Explorer 1 confirmed Van Allen's earlier upper
atmosphere research and resulted in discovery of a phenomenon later named the
Van Allen Radiation Belts -- huge regions of space in which electrons and
protons are trapped within the earth's geomagnetic field. That discovery put
him on the cover of the May 4, 1959, issue of TIME magazine.

    Van Allen made a second appearance on TIME's cover in January 1961,
when, at age 46, he was among 15 U.S. scientists collectively named by the
magazine as "Men of the Year.'' Space, he told TIME then, "is the hole we are
in -- a vast area of human ignorance. The history of the world shows that
attacking ignorance is fruitful.''

       Explorer 1 was the first of 30 space missions involving scientific
payloads designed by Van Allen and his UI colleagues to explore the physical
properties of the solar system. Van Allen's contributions to the Pioneer 10 and
Pioneer 11 deep space probes provided 30 years of data trasmitted back to Earth
during those spacecrafts' long journeys to Saturn, Jupiter and beyond. Now more
than 7 billion miles from earth, Pioneer 10 is among the most remote man-made
objects in the universe.

     "I want to find out how the solar system originated, how it works,
what its future is,'' Van Allen told an interviewer in 1974. "I'm not claiming
it will do anybody any good. It's a matter of intellectual endeavor.''

    Van Allen was a vocal opponent of manned space exploration, which he
considered "of dubious efficacy'' and a drain on limited federal funding for
space exploration. He believed strongly that space science is best conducted by
unmanned, automated spacecraft that can be remotely commanded
 from earth.

    In 1987, Van Allen received the National Medal of Science from
President Ronald Reagan at a White House ceremony. In 1989, he received the
prestigious Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, an award
presented by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. He was also presented the 2004
National Space Grant Distinguished Service Award by the National Space Grant
Foundation, a lifetime achievement award recognizing his efforts to support and
promote aerospace technology, science and education.

     Van Allen spent most of his professional career as a professor of
physics at the University of Iowa. He chaired the UI's Department of Physics
and Astronomy between 1951 and his retirement in 1985 at age 70. In June of
1982 the building that now houses the UI physics department was dedicated as
"Van Allen Hall.''

     Despite his prominence within the international space physics
community and the demands of his research, Van Allen treasured his interactions
with UI students at all levels. During his 34 years as a faculty member, he
taught a wide range of courses, including general physics, general astronomy,
electricity and magnetism, introduction to modern physics, radio astronomy,
intermediate mechanics and a specialized course in solar-terrestrial physics.

    "Perhaps my favorite,'' he said in 1990, "was General Astronomy, an
introductory but rigorous course on the solar system, with laboratory, which I
taught for 17 years.''

    Although he officially retired in 1985, Van Allen continued his
research up until the time of his death. He maintained an open-door policy
while working in his office on the top floor of Van Allen Hall and was always
accessibile to a loyal following of faculty, students and staff.

    Born in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, on Sept. 7, 1914, Van Allen was the
second of four sons of Alfred Morris and Alma Olney Van Allen. As a child he
was fascinated by mechanical and electrical devices and was an avid reader of
Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazines. He once ``horrified'' his
mother by constructing a coil that produced foot-long sparks and caused his
hair to stand on end.

    He was valedictorian of Mount Pleasant High School's class of 1931. He
went on to study physics, chemistry and math at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount
Pleasant, graduating suma cum laude in 1935. He enrolled in graduate school at
the University of Iowa in 1935 and completed his master's degree in 1936. A
fellowship allowed him to continue studying nuclear physics at the Carnegie
Institution in Washington, D.C., where he also became immersed in research in
geomagnetism, cosmic rays, auroral physics and the physics of Earth's upper
atmosphere.

    With the outbreak of World War II, Van Allen was appointed to a staff
position with the National Defense Research Council in Washington, D.C. His
work in a laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland, resulted a new generation of
radio-proximity fuses used for anti-aircraft and shore bombardment.

    He was commissioned as a U.S. Navy lieutenant in 1942 and worked on a
succession of Pacific Fleet destroyers, instructing gunnery officers and
conducting tests on his artillery fuzes. He was an assistant staff gunnery
officer on the battleship USS Washington when the ship successfully defended
itself against a Japanese kamakazi attack during the Battle of the Philippines
Sea. He was promoted to lieutenant commander in 1946.

    "My service as a naval officer was, far and away, the most broadening
experience of my lifetime,'' he wrote in a 1990 autobiographical essay.

    Between 1946 and 1950 Van Allen worked at Johns Hopkins University in
Maryland, where he pioneered the use of German V-2 and other early rocket
systems in high-altitude research. An international effort to study the physics
of the solar system began in 1950 at a dinner party at his Maryland home. At
that party, Van Allen and his guests conceptualized the International
Geophysical Year, a global research effort that involved 60,000 scientists from
66 nations in 1957 and 1958.

    Between 1949 and 1957, Van Allen led four scientific expeditions
throughout the world that used ship-launched, sub-orbital rockets to study
cosmic rays and the earth's magnetic field.

    Van Allen returned to Iowa from Johns Hopkins in 1951 as professor and
head of the UI's Department of Physics, a position he held until his retirement
in 1985. Between 1985 and 1990 he was the Roy. J. Carver Professor of Physics,
Emeritus, at the UI and, after 1990 was a Regent Distinguished Professor.

    Van Allen is survived by his wife of 60 years , Abigail Fithian
Halsey, and five children: Cynthia Van Allen Schaffner, Margot Van Alen Cairns,
Sarah Van Allen Trimble, Thomas and Peter.

    Since 1961, the Van Allens have lived in a home at 5 Woodland Mounds
Road, Iowa City.

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