James Alfred Van Allen (born September 7 1914) is an American physicist associated with 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.

He told Democracy Now! that "I'm a critic of [manned space flights] in terms of the yield of either scientific results or any results from the human space flight program that's been very meager." [1]

Honors

• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1978
• Crafoord Prize in 1989
• Vannevar Bush Award in 1991

External links

• Brief biography
• What Is A Space Scientist? An Autobiographical Example by James Van Allen