James Van Allen
Dr. James Van Allen was our very own rocket scientist, one of those native sons in whom all Iowans took pride. Van Allen was brilliant intellectually, but he also had the knack of a problem solver to complement the curiosity and scientific rigor required of a pioneering space scientist.
After achieving a master’s and doctorate in nuclear physics at the University of Iowa, Van Allen worked on developing proximity fuses during World War II. He served in the South Pacific and called his time in the service “the most broadening experience of my lifetime.”
After the war, he worked developing rockets for high-altitude research.
In 1951, he was asked to apply to become head of the physics department at UI, but was not the committee’s first choice. When finally named to the post, he and his family moved to Iowa City and lived in the post-war Quonset huts on campus for $35 a month.
He was given a grant to continue his rocket work and figured out a way to use balloons to transport rockets high above the earth (50,000 feet) before then firing the rockets to heights of 250,000 feet. The rockoons, as they were known, gathered information on the intensity of cosmic rays.
In 1958, Van Allen’s experiments aboard Explorer I discovered the radiation belts surrounding Earth.
Under Van Allen’s guidance, UI scientists developed technology to monitor nuclear tests from space, built satellites and provided the scientific instrumentation (becoming the first university to do so) and in the early 1960s helped develop instruments for the Mariner space probes to Mars, Venus and beyond.
Van Allen’s energetic particle instruments flew on Pioneer 10 and 11 to Jupiter and provided data for decades. He was credited with discovering a new moon near Saturn in 1979.
Even though he was a pioneer of space exploration, he was not in favor of manned space missions, reasoning that they were dangerous, expensive and not the most efficient way to gather data.
He taught graduate students at UI during the same time he was pioneering space technology. He and his wife, Abigail, raised five children. Van Allen was kind, caring, unassuming and a gentleman. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t insist on intellectual rigor from his students.
He was one of the greatest American space scientists of his time with a wide range of expertise. He helped give birth to the space age.
He belonged to his country, but his heart never left Iowa. The feeling was mutual.