James Van Allen, one of the pioneers of America’s space program who gave his name to the belts of radiation that encircle Earth, died Wednesday. He was 91.
Van Allen died of heart failure at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, said university spokesman Stephen Pradarelli.
The winner of numerous awards and proclamations, including the nation’s highest scientific award, the National Medal of Science, Van Allen helped blaze the trail into space for America in the panicky weeks and months after the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957.
Not quite four months after Sputnik, America launched its first successful space mission, Explorer 1, which carried in its payload a small Geiger counter developed by Van Allen. The instrument detected two belts of intense radiation surrounding Earth, a discovery that marked the birth of magnetospheric physics and made Van Allen a scientific celebrity.
The radiation belts were named for him. In 1959, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Two years later, he was named one of America’s top scientists.
“His discovery of the Van Allen Belts was the first major scientific discovery of the space age,” said Ed Stone, former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “The discovery was unexpected, and that’s what made it so exciting. It set the tone for the further exploration of space by revealing how much there was to be discovered.”
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