James Van Allen was born on September 7, 1914, on a small farm near Mount Pleasant, Iowa. As a child, he was fascinated by mechanical and electrical devices and was an … See more

Discharged from the Navy in 1946, Van Allen returned to civilian research at APL. He organized and directed a team at Johns Hopkins University to conduct high-altitude experiments, using V-2 rockets captured from the Germans at the end of World War II See more

The May 4, 1959, issue of Time magazine credited James Van Allen as the man most responsible for giving the U.S. "a big lead in scientific achievement." They called Van Allen "a … See more

Van Allen's wife of 61 years was Abigail Fithian Halsey II of Cincinnati (1922–2008). They met at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) during World War II. They were married October 13, 1945, in Southampton, Long … See more

In August 1939, Van Allen joined the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. as … See more

In 1950 an event occurred that began small but was to affect the future of Van Allen and all his countrymen. In March, British Physicist Sydney Chapman dropped in on Van Allen [and] remarked that he would like to meet other scientists in the Washington … See more

Van Allen stepped down as the head of the department of physics and astronomy in 1985, but continued working at the University of Iowa as … See more