Physicist James Van Allen Dies at 91

Physicist James Van Allen Dies at 91

By TODD DVORAK

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2292011

IOWA CITY, Iowa Aug 9, 2006 (AP)- Physicist James A. Van Allen, a
leader in space exploration who discovered the radiation belts
surrounding the Earth that now bear his name, died Wednesday. He was
91.

The University of Iowa, where he taught for years, announced the death
in a statement on its Web site.

In a career that stretched over more than a half-century, Van Allen
designed scientific instruments for dozens of research flights, first
with small rockets and balloons, and eventually with space probes that
traveled to distant planets and beyond.

Van Allen gained global attention in the late 1950s when instruments he
designed and placed aboard the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I,
discovered the bands of intense radiation that surround the earth, now
known as the Van Allen Belts.

The bands spawned a whole new field of research known as magnetospheric
physics, an area of study that now involves more than 1,000
investigators in more than 20 countries.

The discovery also propelled the United States in its space exploration
race with the Soviet Union and prompted Time magazine to put Van Allen
on the cover of its May 4, 1959, issue.

The folksy, pipe-smoking scientist, called "Van" by friends, retired
from full-time teaching in 1985. But he continued to write, oversee
research, counsel students and monitor data gathered by satellites. He
worked in a large, cluttered corner office on the seventh floor of the
physics and astronomy building that bears his name.

"Jim Van Allen was a good friend of our family. His loss saddens
Christie and me," Gov. Tom Vilsack said. "His passing is a sad day for
science in America and the world.

Though he was an early advocate of a concerted national space program,
Van Allen was a strong critic of most manned space projects, once
dismissing the U.S. proposal for a manned space station "speculative
and ... poorly founded."

Explorer 1, which weighed just 31 pounds, was launched Jan. 31, 1958,
during an emotional time just after the Sputnik launches by the Soviet
Union created new Cold War fears. The instruments that Van Allen
developed for the mission were tiny Geiger counters to measure
radiation.

Near the 35th anniversary of the launch, Van Allen recalled in an
Associated Press interview how scientists waited tensely for
confirmation the satellite was in orbit.

When the signal finally came, "it was exhilarating. ... That was the
big break, knowing it had made it around the earth, that it was
actually in orbit."

The success of the flight created nationwide celebration. Equally
exciting for the scientists was the discovery of the radiation belts, a
discovery that happened slowly over the next weeks and months as they
pieced together data coming from the satellite.

"We had discovered a whole new phenomenon which had not been known or
predicted before," Van Allen said. "We were really on top of the world,
professionally speaking." Later in 1958, another scientist proposed
naming the belts for Van Allen.

His later projects included the Pioneer 10 and 11 flights, which
studied the radiation belts of Jupiter in 1973 and 1974 and the
radiation belts of Saturn in 1979.

Van Allen continued to monitor data from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft for
decades as it became the most remote manmade object, billions of miles
away.

Closer to Earth, satellites had revolutionized communications, military
surveillance and environmental monitoring. Asked in 1993 whether he
envisioned the era of satellite communications, he said: "I guess the
honest answer is not really, but I'm not astonished. That sort of thing
was kicking around."

In 1987, President Reagan presented Van Allen with the National Medal
of Science, the nation's highest honor for scientific achievement.

Two years later, Van Allen received the Crafoord Prize, awarded by the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm each year since 1982 for
scientific research in areas not recognized by the Nobel Prizes.

Besides the discovery of the Van Allen belts, the academy cited him for
providing the first instruments carried near another planet, those
taken on the 1962 Venus mission by Mariner 2, and for his work training
other space researchers.

"I love to work and I love this subject," he said in 1993. As for
quitting, he said, "not as long as I'm able I won't."

Van Allen was born Sept. 7, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. As an
undergraduate at Iowa Wesleyan College, he helped prepare research
instruments for the Byrd Antarctic Expedition. He got his master's and
Ph.D. from the University of Iowa.

After serving in the Naval Reserve during World War II, he was a
researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, supervising tests
of captured German V-2 rockets and developing similar rockets to probe
the upper atmosphere.

One of the highlights of this early research was the 1953 discovery of
electrons believed to be the driving force behind the northern and
southern lights.

Through his career, he continued to advocate unmanned satellites, once
telling a panel that manned space programs have been beset by cost
overruns but unmanned rockets "have delivered on their promises and
have gone far beyond them."

In testimony before a House subcommittee in 1985, Van Allen said that
President Reagan's endorsement of a $20 billion manned space station
project was "so speculative and so poorly founded that no one of lesser
stature would have dared mention it to an informed audience."

In 2004, he spoke out again, arguing against Bush administration plans
for a space station on the moon and a manned mission to Mars.

"I'm one of the most durable and fervent advocates of space
exploration, but my take is that we could do it robotically at far less
cost and far greater quantity and quality of results," he said.

Van Allen was named to the National Academy of Sciences in 1959. He
also was a consultant to the U.S. Congress Office of Technology
Assessment, NASA and the Space Studies Board of the National Academy of
Sciences.