James Van Allen

* April 5 1950Van Allen left APL to accept a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation research fellowship at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

* 1951James Van Allen became head of the physics department at the University of Iowa. Before long, he was enlisting students in his efforts to discover the secrets of the wild blue yonder and inventing ways to carry instruments higher into the atmosphere than ever before. Van Allen was the first to devise a balloon-rocket combination that lifted rockets on balloons high above most of Earth’s atmosphere before firing them even higher. The rockets were ignited after the balloons reached an altitude of 16 kilometers.
* 1952As "TIME" reported in 1959, “Van Allen’s ‘Rockoons’ could not be fired in Iowa for fear that the spent rockets would strike an Iowan or his house.” So Van Allen convinced the U.S. Coast Guard to let him fire his rockoons from the icebreaker Eastwind that was bound for Greenland. “The first balloon rose properly to 70,000 ft., but the rocket hanging under it did not fire. The second Rockoon behaved in the same maddening way. On the theory that extreme cold at high altitude might have stopped the clockwork supposed to ignite the rockets, Van Allen heated cans of orange juice, snuggled them into the third Rockoon’s gondola, and wrapped the whole business in insulation. The rocket fired.”
* 1953Rockoons fired off Newfoundland detect the first hint of radiation belts surrounding Earth. The low-cost Rockoon technique was later used by the Office of Naval Research and The University of Iowa research groups in 1953-55 and 1957, from ships in sea between Boston and Thule, Greenland.
* January 26 1956Symposium on "The Scientific Uses of Earth Satellites" held at the University of Michigan under sponsorship of the Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Panel, James A. Van Allen of The University of Iowa, Chairman.
* July 1 1957The International Geophysical Year begins. IGY is carried out by the International Council of Scientific Unions, over an 18-month period selected to match the period of maximum solar activity (e.g. sun spots). Lloyd Berkner, one of the scientists at the April 5, 1950 Silver Spring, Maryland meeting in Van Allen's home, serves as president of the ICSU from 1957 to 1959.
* September 26 1957Thirty-six Rockoons (balloon-launched rockets) were launched from Navy icebreaker U.S.S. Glacier in Atlantic, Pacific, and Antarctic areas ranging from 75° N. to 72° S. latitude, as part of the U.S. International Geophysical Year scientific program headed by James A. Van Allen and Lawrence J. Cahill of The University of Iowa. These were the first known upper atmosphere rocket soundings in the Antartctic area. Launched from IGY Rockoon Launch Site 2, Atlantic Ocean - Latitude: 0.83° N, Longitude: 0.99° W.
* October 4 1957The Soviet Union (USSR) successfully launches Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, as part of their participation in the IGY.
* January 31 1958The first American satellite, Explorer 1, was launched into Earth's orbit on a Jupiter C missile from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Aboard Explorer 1 were a micrometeorite detector and a cosmic ray experiment designed by Dr. Van Allen and his graduate students. Data from Explorer 1 and Explorer 3 (launched March 26 1958) were used by the Iowa group to make the first space-age scientific discovery: the existence of a doughnut-shaped region of charged particle radiation trapped by Earth’s magnetic field.
* July 1958United States Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act (commonly called the "Space Act"), which created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as of October 1, 1958 from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and other government agencies.
* December 6 1958
Pioneer 3, the third intended U.S. International Geophysical Year lunar probe under the direction of NASA with the Army acting as executive agent, was launched from the Atlantic Missile Range by a Juno II rocket. The primary objective of the flight, to place the 12.95 pound (5.87 kg) scientific payload in the vicinity of the moon, failed. Pioneer III did reach an altitude of 63,000 miles (101 Mm), providing Van Allen additional data that led to discovery of a second radiation belt. Trapped radiation starts at an altitude of several hundred miles from Earth and extends for several thousand miles into space. The Van Allen radiation belts are named for Dr. James Van Allen, their discoverer.

* May 4 1959"TIME" magazine writers credited James Van Allen as the man most responsible for giving the U.S. “a big lead in scientific achievement.” They called Van Allen “a key figure in the cold war’s competition for prestige. ...Today he can tip back his head and look at the sky. Beyond its outermost blue are the world-encompassing belts of fierce radiation that bear his name. No human name has ever been given to a more majestic feature of the planet Earth.”

* 1960 - 1985James Van Allen, his colleagues, associates and students at The University of Iowa continued to fly scientific instruments on sounding rockets, Earth satellites (Explorer 52 / Hawkeye 1), and interplanetary spacecraft — including the first missions (Pioneer program, Mariner program, Voyager program, Galileo spacecraft) to the planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Their discoveries contributed important segments to the world's knowledge of energetic particles, plasmas and radio waves throughout the solar system.
* 1985Dr. Van Allen retired from The University of Iowa in 1985, but continued to live in Iowa City and served as the Carver Professor of Physics, Emeritus.
* October 9 2004The University of Iowa and the UI Alumni Association hosted a celebration to honor Professor James Van Allen and his many accomplishments, and in recognition of his 90th birthday. Activities included an invited lecture series, a public lecture followed by a cake and punch reception, and an evening banquet.
* August 2005An Elementary School bearing his name opens in North Liberty, Iowa.
* August 9, 2006Dr. Van Allen died at University Hospitals in Iowa City from heart failure.

Quotations

*“Certainly one of the most enthralling things about human life is the recognition that we live in what, for practical purposes, is a universe without bounds.”

*“...Outer space, once a region of spirited international competition, is also a region of international cooperation. I realized this as early as 1959, when I attended an international conference on cosmic radiation in Moscow. At this conference, there were many differing views and differing methods of attack, but the problems were common ones to all of us and a unity of basic purpose was everywhere evident.

*“Many of the papers presented there depended in an essential way upon others which had appeared originally in as many as three or four different languages. Surely science is one of the universal human activities.”

References

Abigail Foerstner published a book with the title "James van Allen: The first eight billion miles" in 2007.

* [http://www-pi.physics.uiowa.edu/java/ What Is A Space Scientist? An Autobiographical Example] by James Van Allen
* [http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/van90/ Van Allen Day - October 9, 2004] University of Iowa Foundation and UI Department of Astronomy & Physics
* [http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/van90/VanAllenBio_LudwigOct2004.pdf James Van Allen, From High School to the Beginning of the Space Era: A Biographical Sketch] by George Ludwig
* [http://www.aip.org/history/ead/20000086.html Organization of the James A. Van Allen Papers, 1938-1990]
* [http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/van90/ExplorerSatellites_LudwigOct2004.pdf The First Explorer Satellites] by George Ludwig
* [http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/van90/McIlwain_lecture.pdf Discovery of the Van Allen Radiation Belts] by Carl McIlwain
* [http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sputnik/vanallen.html Brief NASA biography]
* [http://www.agu.org/inside/awards/vanallen.html Brief biography]
* [http://www.bobolinkbooks.com/BALLAST/WPA.html Artist Robert Tabor Depicts the Discovery of Van Allen Radiation Belts]
* [http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/van90/Thomsen_lecture.pdf Jupiter's Radiation Belt and Pioneer 10 and 11] by Michelle Thomsen
* [http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/van90/Krimigis_lectureOct2004.pdf Planetary Magnetospheres: Van Allen Radiation Belts of the Solar System Planets] by Stamatios M. Krimigis
* Van Allen, James A. Space Science, Space Technology and the Space Station; Scientific American, January 1986, page 22.
* Mark Wolverton. [http://www.nap.edu/books/0309090504/html/179.html The Depths of Space: The Story of the Pioneer Planetary Probes] . 2004
* [http://www.nap.edu/books/0309090504/html/ Mark Wolverton's "The Depths of Space" online]
* [http://quest.nasa.gov/sso/cool/pioneer10/general/vanallen.html Silver Anniversary of Pioneer 10]
* [http://itsnt166.iowa.uiowa.edu/uns-archives/2006/august/080906van-allen-death.html U.S. Space Pioneer, UI Professor James A. Van Allen Dies]
* [http://www.iccsd.k12.ia.us/Schools/vanallen/vanallenhome.htm] Van Allen elementary homepage
* [http://www.space.com/news/ap_060809_vanallen_obit.html SPACE.com: U.S. Space Pioneer James Van Allen Dies (Accessed 8/10/06)]
* [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7108/pdf/443158a.pdf Obituary: James A. Van Allen (1914–2006)] in Nature, 14 September 2006 DOI: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/443158a] Van Allen
* [http://www.astronautix.com/astros/vanallen.htm Timeline]
* [http://rbsp.jhuapl.edu NASA Radiation Belt Storm Probes Mission]