text: James Alfred Van Allen (born September 7, 1914) is considered America's foremost space scientist. A majority of his career in research and teaching has been at the University of Iowa. The Van Allen radiation belts were named after him, following the 1958 satellite missions (Explorer I and Explorer III) in which Van Allen had argued that a Geiger counter should be used to detect charged particles.\n\n“Certainly one of the most enthralling things about human life is the recognition that we live in what, for practical purposes, is a universe without bounds.” James Van Allen.\n\nContents [hide]\n1 Honors \n2 Timeline (1914-present) \n3 In Search of the Heliopause \n4 Pioneer Anomaly \n5 External links \n \n\n\n[edit]\nHonors\nTime Men of the Year in 1960, one of 15 US scientists honored \nGold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1978 \nNational Medal of Science in 1987 \nCrafoord Prize in 1989 \nVannevar Bush Award in 1991 \nNational Air and Space Museum Trophy in 2006 \n[edit]\nTimeline (1914-present)\nSeptember 7, 1914 \nJames Van Allen was born in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.\n\n1931 \nJames Van Allen graduated as valedictorian of his Mount Pleasant Public High School class.\n\n1935 \nVan Allen received his Bachelor of Science degree, summa cum laude, from Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant. During his undergraduate years, he studied with Professor Thomas Poulter, a first-class physicist. He tracked meteors, conducted a magnetic survey of Mount Pleasant, and measured cosmic rays at ground level.\n\n1936 \nVan Allen earned his master’s degree in solid state physics from the University of Iowa.\n\n1939 \nVan Allen received his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of Iowa. His doctoral research was on measuring the cross-section of the deuteron-deuteron reaction.\n\n1940 \nAs a staff physicist for the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., Van Allen worked on developing photoelectric and radio proximity fuses for bombs, rockets, and gun-fired projectiles. It was here that Dr. Van Allen acquired his interest in cosmic rays.\n\n1942 \nVan Allen joined the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of Johns Hopkins University to continue his work on proximity fuses. Later in 1942, he entered the Navy, serving in the South Pacific Fleet as an assistant gunnery officer.\n\n1946 \nDischarged from the Navy, Van Allen returned to civilian research at APL. He organized and directed a team at John Hopkins University to conduct high-altitude experiments using V-2 rockets, captured from the Germans at the end of World War II, to survey sounding rocket requirements for upper atmosphere research. The V-2 was found to be too heavy and complex for this task. Van Allen decided that what was needed was a small rocket, derived from the Aerojet WAC Corporal and the Bumblebee missile developed under a US Navy program. He drew specifications for this combination of an Aerojet booster and a Bumblebee second stage for this cheaper rocket, dubbed the Aerobee and headed the committee that convinced the U.S. government to produce it. Aerobees were launched for 53 m tall launch towers to provide the necessary stability until enough speed had been gained for the fins to be effective in controlling the rocket. Launch towers were built at White Sands Missile Range, Fort Churchill, Wallops Island, and aboard the research ship USN Norton Sound. The Aerobee could take a 68 kg payload to an altitude of 130 km.\n\nMarch 1, 1949 \nThe concept of launching of small high-performance rockets suspended from a balloon above most of the atmosphere (later called "Rockoons"), developed by Cmdr. Lee Lewis, Cmdr. G. Halvorson, S. F. Singer, and J. A. Van Allen during Aerobee firing cruise of U.S.S. Norton Sound.\n\nApril 5, 1950 \nVan Allen left APL to accept a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation research fellowship at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. TIME magazine reported in 1959, “In 1950 an eve