[HCRA] FW: globeandmail.com : James Van Allen, 91

[Daniel Sullivan]

----Original Message Follows----
From: "Dan Sullivan" <dsullivan at cra-usa.net>
To: <djs13 at hotmail.com>,"'Lindquist, Rick, N1RL'" <n1rl at arrl.org>
Subject: globeandmail.com : James Van Allen, 91
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 08:40:07 -0400

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060809.wobvanallen0809/
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James Van Allen, 91


TODD DVORAK

Associated Press

IOWA CITY, Iowa - 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, Dr. Van Allen
designed scientific instruments for dozens of research flights, first with
small rockets and balloons, and eventually with space probes that travelled
to distant planets and beyond.

He 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 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 Mr. 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," Governor Tom Vilsack said. "His passing is a sad day for science in
America and the world.

Although he was an early advocate of a concerted national space program, Dr.
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 only 14 kilograms, 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 he developed for the
mission were tiny Geiger counters to measure radiation.

Near the 35th anniversary of the launch, Dr. Van Allen recalled in an
Associated Press interview how scientists waited tensely for confirmation
tha tthe 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 celebration across the Untied States.
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," Dr. Van Allen said. "We were really on top of the world,
professionally speaking." Later in 1958, another scientist proposed naming
the belts for Dr. 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.

He continued to monitor data from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft for decades as
it became the most remote manmade object, billions of kilometres 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 Ronald Reagan presented Dr. Van Allen with the National
Medal of Science, the highest U.S. honour for scientific achievement.

Two years later, Dr. 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."

Dr. 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 degree
and PhD from the University of Iowa.

After serving in the Naval Reserve during the Second World War, 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, Dr. Van Allen said that
Mr. 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 proposals by the administration
of U.S. President George W. Bush 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.

Dr. 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.