The Mount Pleasant–born physicist who discovered the radiation belts around Earth and helped launch the Space Age.
James Alfred Van Allen was born on September 7, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. He became a physicist and, after wartime research, joined the University of Iowa, building it into a center of space science.
His instruments aboard Explorer 1 — America's first satellite, in 1958 — revealed bands of charged particles trapped by Earth's magnetic field, now called the Van Allen radiation belts. It was the first major discovery of the Space Age.
Van Allen made the University of Iowa a NASA mainstay and appeared on the cover of Time. Generations of Iowa students built instruments that flew across the solar system under his direction.
The physics building at the University of Iowa bears his name.
The Mount Pleasant–born physicist who discovered the radiation belts around Earth and helped launch the Space Age.
James Van Allen was from Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
1914–2006.
Curious about your own family's story? We trace it through the public record and write it up as a documented history.
See how it works →This profile presents only publicly reported facts, drawn from the sources above. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the family or its companies.
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons (public domain or freely licensed).