Van Allen, James Alfred : 1914-2006

Van Allen, James Alfred (1914-2006)
physicist, was born at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa and was educated at Iowa Wesleyan College and the State University of Iowa.  He did research in terrestrial magnetism at the Carnegie Institute in Washington and directed an applied physics laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.  He led a scientific expedition for the study of cosmic radiation in Peru and made similar studies in Alaska, Greenland, and Antarctica.

Meanwhile he had become professor of physics at the State University of Iowa.  Although his work in developing the proximity fuze and the Aerobee rocket may have won him acclaim, he is best knowno as the discoverer of the “Van Allen Belt”, a radioactive layer surrounding the earth.

~ The Lincoln Library of Essential Information, Volume 2, Thirty-Fifth Edition, 1972, Biography, Page 1991.

You can visit the memorial page for James Alfred Van Allen.