Jim Van Allen was my friend and role model. “He represented the very image of a superb faculty member. His teaching prowess was legendary, his research was defining, and his collegiality and service were unmatched. I will always be grateful for is his kindness to my family and to me, and I will always be inspired and motivated by his complete dedication to the University of Iowa. I will miss him greatly. On behalf of the entire University community, I extend our sympathies to the Van Allen family.

UI Interim President Gary Fethke

James Van Allen was one of the university’s most influential and best-regarded scholars of all time. Yet he remained the most unassuming and caring man. We will all miss him deeply.

UI Executive Vice President and Provost Michael Hogan

All of us in the Department of Physics and Astronomy are profoundly saddened by the passing of Professor Van Allen, and we offer our deepest sympathies to his family. For decades, Dr. Van Allen has been an inspiration and a role model to our faculty, staff, and students. His dedication to science and discovery, as well as to teaching and public service were unmatched. In so many ways, Dr. Van Allen defined our Department. He will be sorely missed.

Tom Boggess
UI Department of Physics and Astronomy, chair

Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack

James Van Allen was one of the greatest and most accomplished American space scientists of our time and few researchers had such wide range of expertise in so many scientific disciplines. NASA's path of space exploration is far more advanced today because of Dr. Van Allen's ground breaking work.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin

Iowa has lost its leading citizen, a scholar who symbolized for the nation the importance of scientific inquiry. He was America's pre-eminent space researcher. The instruments he designed and placed aboared Explorer 1, America's first satellite, propelled the United States in the space exploration race; and the instrumentation research that Jim Van Allen pioneered has made the vast unknown of space increasingly intelligible.

U.S. Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa

James Van Allen was an authentic American whose legacy belongs to the   ages. From space to the classroom, Dr. Van Allen gave of himself to   his friends, to his students, and to his colleagues in so many ways. From the moment he burst onto the world scene with the Explorer mission in 1958, Van Allen helped his countrymen take their first strides into space. Van Allen’s Explorer 1, which weighed just 31 pounds, captured our collective imagination and spawned a space journey that defined our era.

In addition to his inspired scholarship and scientific leadership, Van Allen was a genuine person who brought so much pleasure to so many in his cherished University of Iowa community and to his colleagues in astronomy and space science around the world. Personally, Jim was a friend who touched my family and me in a way than can never be replicated. We will miss him deeply even as we pursue the journey he propelled with such confidence. We send our deepest, most heartfelt condolences to his family, friends and colleagues everywhere.

David J. Skorton
President, Cornell University
Former President, University of Iowa

One of my most cherished papers is a short essay that I submitted in response to an assignment in Prof. Van Allen’s Solar Terrestrial Physics class.  I hadn’t realized that there was that much red ink even available in Iowa. That he vested so much effort into helping me straighten out and clarify my thinking in his practical, common sense, and rigorous way went far beyond the science lessons of the essay.  Van taught science and life by example.

Thomas P. Armstrong
MS 1964 (Van Allen)
PhD 1966 (Montgomery)

It was sad to learn of the death of James Van Allen, whom I have known for over forty years, and of whom I have many fond memories. The first time I met him was in 1965. I participated as a young scientist in the Billy McCormack Advanced Study Institute ”Radiation Trapped in the Earth’s Magnetic Field”, in Bergen, Norway. Van Allen chaired one of the sessions and he gave me an unscheduled opportunity to present my own ongoing research. This gave me a very favourable start in the international space physics community. Through the years we met on many occasions. A memorable one was during the Voyager Neptune encounter at JPL in Pasadena, August 25, 1989. I had the good luck to sit with him in front of a monitor when the first data came in showing the existence of a radiation belt around Neptune.

Professor Carl-Gunne Fälthammar
Space and Plasma Physics, Alfvén Laboratory
Electrical Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology
Stockholm, Sweden

Prof. Van Allen was the ultimate role model, not only concerning research and the integrity of the scientific process, but for life. The following comments were the final paragraphs of a talk that I gave at the University in the "Distinguised Lecture" series in October 2004:    

This month, when Iowa celebrated the 90th birthday of Prof. Van Allen, it revealed the large number of people whose lives were touched by Prof. Van Allen, and not only with regard to teaching them science. I noted to my wife Anniek last weekend that if it hadn't been for a letter from Van, I would not have got an NSF Fellowship to study in Leiden, where I met her. She responded very unromantically, "Well you would have met someone else." I was looking through old papers, seeing if I had correspondence with Prof. Van Allen from the 1960s. I vaguely remembered a few things, such as him chastising me for not sending in a photo for the Department's collections of graduates, maybe some of you have been chastised for that. We didn't find that specific correspondence, although Anniek had saved the photo, perhaps because that was from the brief period when I had lots of hair.

But what I did find last weekend was an exchange of letters with Prof. Van Allen in the 1980s. I had written to him in part because I heard something at NASA Headquarters that suggested his proposal for an instrument on a mission to Jupiter may not be selected because of his criticisms of the manned space flight program. In his return letter, as if to put this matter in its proper place, he referred to it only in a postscript, which read: "P.S. I do understand that my criticism of NASA's emphasis on the shuttle, on manned space flight, and on the space station has not endeared me to NASA management but I have taken the position that I am dealing with honorable individuals, who understand that there is room for differences of opinion on these basic matters. I have never detected any clear case of a reprisal but there may be such on a subtle level."

It is not only Prof. Van Allen's accomplishments in science that his students can only dream of emulating. He is, in reality, a man for all seasons.

-----

It is taking a while for Van's passing to sink in. Somehow he seemed to be an institution who would continue forever. In a sense, maybe he will. I wrote the following in the middle of last night.

Professor Van Allen taught the integrity of the scientific process by example. But he was more than a role model.  He became a beacon. Somehow his calm made directions clear. Iowa will never seem the same without Van. But perhaps, if we think of him, he can always be a beacon.

James E. Hansen
UI Alumnus
Lead Climate Scientist and
Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science

Note to members of the Planetary Society

I had the pleasure of working with James Van Allen over many years through my JPL activities. I remember in 1974 when NASA and ESA started to discuss future missions together, and we first consider the Jupiter Orbiter/Probe mission, later called Galileo. James was the leader of the NASA team and I led the ESA team. We had many long debates about the mission and payload; James was determined there should not be a probe so that a simpler spinning spacecraft could then study the Jovian magnetosphere. On behalf of ESA I  fought hard for the probe and as they say the rest is history, as this became a major part of the Galileo mission.

James was always a perfect gentleman and a delight to work with. I shall miss him and his wise counsel.

Professor Garry E. Hunt
Former NASA Voyager PI and
Member of The Planetary Society Advisory Board
Businessman, Scientist, Broadcaster, Writer

Though I knew Jim Van Allen only peripherally, I want to add an anecdote on behalf of my late physicist parents John J. Hopfield and Helen S. Hopfield. Abigail Van Allen had been the secretary of the group my mother was in at what is now the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. (At the time it was the unnamed proximity fuse laboratory.) My father was a collaborator in Jim’s exploration of the far UV spectrum of the sun in the mid to late 1940’s, using at first liberated V-2 rockets fired at the White Sands range.  I still have pictures of the group out hunting for the spectrograph in the desert.  So I heard about Jim, and met him, while I was in high school.

They measured that spectrum first.  When I went to Caltech in 1980, I met Jesse Greenstein, who (learning who I was) confided that he actually had the first rocket attempt at that measurement, but that the shutter on his spectrograph had failed to open.  Thus the triumph of physicists over an astronomer.

My father died in 1952.  In about 1990, Jim visited Caltech (where I was then a professor), and I introduced myself to him at a dinner in his honor at the Athenaeum. In his face there was happiness that I had sought him out—but also guilt.  He remarked that he had always intended to get around to writing up the last experiments he and my father had done, that he didn’t know of better more recent experiments, he thought the data was around somewhere but perhaps I had some of the lab books, and that he hoped to get to it soon.  What a gracious way to tell me how much he had enjoyed knowing my dad.

John J. Hopfield (Jr.)
President, American Physical Society
Princeton University

Professor Van Allen was a valued mentor for me. He employed my wife, Mavis, as a research associate for her first year of graduate school at the University of Iowa.  

Although Dr. Gurnett was my advisor, Dr. Van Allen always took an interest in me and wrote letters of reference on several occasions. I am indebted to him not only for the doors he opened, but also for the standards he expected, and for the gentle firmness with which he made sure the department’s students “did the right thing”.  

One time after passing my comprehensive exams I went to visit him in his office. I had noticed that the University of Iowa catalog allowed going directly for a Ph.D. without an intervening Master’s, and I expressed a desire to do that. He leaned back, took a slow puff on his pipe, and with a twinkle in his eye, said, “Two theses are better than one!”  He was right, of course.

Mavis, and I have always been proud of our association with Professor Van Allen. She joins me in offering our condolences to the Van Allen family.

David P. Cauffman (Ph.D. 1971, M.S. 1968)
Mavis G. Cauffman (M.S. 1969)
Clinton, WA

I organized and supervised the Satellite Reduction Center for Dr. Van Allen in 1958. The group of students that I hired and trained measured and recorded over 200,000 data points from the data transmitted by Satellite 1958 Epsilon (Explorer IV). It was from this data that Dr. Van Allen and his dedicated group of graduate students, including Carl McIlwain and George Ludwig, discovered the Van Allen radiation belts.
 
I remember so well that we had to work in the hallways in the basement of the old physics building. Lighting was provided by single light bulbs hanging down from the ceiling. The computer took up a whole room. What an exciting time it was! Morale was high. The press was everywhere. Dr. Van Allen was always calm and collected amid all of the confusion. He was quiet, unassuming, considerate, and supportive.
 
I remember Dr. Van Allen coming in every day to look over the results from the data reduction. He had such confidence in me. It made me work even harder.
 
In addition to this large scale production, I supervised many special analyses of the satellite data. In particular, I had the direct responsibility of analyzing the data which pertained to the trapped electrons injected by the nuclear explosions in space (Project Argus).
 
Working for Dr. Van Allen from 1958 - 1961 was an honor and a privilege. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. I will miss him, but never forget him and the many wonderful memories of Iowa City.

 
Annabelle Hudmon
Jacksonville Fla.

I believe life is more enjoyable when I keep in mind the following gem that I overheard Van Allen casually drop at the end of seminar he found satisfactorily illuminating: "It's a good day when you learn one new thing".

John Steinberg
(Ph.D. 1988)
John T. Steinberg
Space Science and Applications
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, N.M.

Long, long ago I made a fateful decision to attend the University of Iowa and major in physics. Soon thereafter I was working in the basement of the old Physics Building reducing binary data recordings from the early Explorer satellites; e.g., Explorer-7 data were then being received in the department. Meanwhile, the hum of expanding activities was everywhere while George Ludwig and Carl McIlwain were making their transitions to post-graduate life. I still remember well the clickety-click of Pamela Rothwell’s high-heel shoes on the concrete floors. I began work in the instrumentation lab in my second year and I was hooked for life, working amongst many new friends, some lifelong. Instruments for Earth orbit, Rangers for the Moon, Mariners for Mars and Venus, and trips to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the new Goddard Space Flight Center, and Cape Canaveral - It was all very heady stuff for an undergraduate student.

Variations on this short story can be told by so many who, from their undergraduate beginnings in Prof. Van Allen’s research laboratory, went on to graduate school and then professional lives in physics and space physics. Many have made lasting contributions in research and teaching.

The world will long remember Prof. Van Allen’s outstanding contributions in research and many will appreciate his ability to encourage the best from talented graduate students. His reach into undergraduate training is a less frequently told story, but one of great impact. As one from the multitude who benefited from his humility, clarity of thought, artistry in teaching, and seemingly effortless leadership, day by day, year by year, I offer a deeply felt thank you.

John D. Craven
(B.A. 1963 and M.S. 1964 under James Van Allen; Ph.D. 1969 under Lou Frank)
Chair and Professor of Physics, Physics Department
Professor of Physics, Geophysical Institute
University of Alaska Fairbanks

We were PIs for Pioneers 10 and 11, so fabulous it convinced me that there are three things in life one does only once, and this is one of them. Van Allen and I had not met until the Planning Conference; Pioneer Manager Charley Hall did not waste time. However, that Conference of about 200 people became headed for an iceberg. No one had decided who would get the datalink during the First Encounter with Jupiter - we were going to decide that now. Van Allen needed all of it for Particles and Fields, this was his mission, an urgently needed reconnaissance of the Jovian Van Allen belts for Voyager's Grand Tour. But the heck with all of that and him being my senior, I needed all of it, as that would even be slow enough for the imaging the whole world would be watching. The 200 began to veer to my side - more than the usual amount of smoke was coming from the famous pipe.

Charley declared a coffee break, suggesting I chat with Van Allen and Simpson. We chatted little.

After a while, Charley quietly joined us and said, "How about each of you - imaging and particles-and-fields - getting half of the data link?" What was there left to say? If he had offered 60 percent, we would have fought for 65. But half each had a touch of fairness and King Solomon's wisdom. That was the Instant. We did the smoothest of missions and were friends for life.

Tom Gehrels
Department of Planetary Sciences
University of Arizona

I was schocked to learn that Professor Van Allen passed away. I knew him as a friendly scientist and professor who helped every time I asked him. I am working on a history of the IGY, where he played a leading role-- before, during and after. He helped me with books, articles, pictures and answered all of my questions. Also, I remember his kindness at the IAGA congress in 2005 in Toulouse, where I had an historical session as convener. He wrote a kindly introduction and sent it to me so that we could read it in Toulouse. So I will remember him as a leading scientist, friend and a kind professor who was helpful to all who ask him for help. I will never forget him.

Wilfried Schröder
Geophysical Institute
Bremen-Röennebeck, Germany
Scientific secretary of society for history of geophysics and cosmical physics

I received my masters and doctorate degrees from the University of Iowa in 1978 and 1982, respectively. I first met Van in May 1976 when I visited the department as a prospective graduate student. I had received my undergraduate degree in physics from Iowa State University in 1974 and had been considering graduate school while my new wife finished her undergraduate program at Iowa State. Van took me around the building to see people and to let me sit in on a class he was teaching. He thought I should meet two graduate students so took me deep into a back corner of a dark room otherwise filled with rows and rows of magnetic tapes. There were two students in the back with lamps over their desks providing the only illumination. They were Jim Green and Bill Kurth. Jim seemed to adopt me as a junior graduate student from then on, but that is another story, reserved for another time.
 
While Professor Gurnett became my thesis advisor, Van was on my masters and doctoral thesis committees and he lead the Solar-Terrestrial Physics course that I took a few years after going to the U. of Iowa. During my masters thesis defense Van asked me to describe the properties of the solar wind. My thesis was about Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR) and involved a technique for determining the source region for the radiation within the terrestrial magnetosphere. At the time researchers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center were using a satellite in orbit around the moon to determine originating locations for the radiation using lunar occultation. They called the radiation Terrestrial Kilometric Radiation (TKR), because they thought it was coming from a wide range of locations inside the magnetosphere. My advisor, Professor Gurnett, thought it was only coming from the nightside auroral region, hence the name. While I contributed to resolving the question, AKR was the right description, my work hadn't involved the solar wind and I really had no idea how to answer Van's question. He gave me the answer, the degree in spite of my ignorance, and taught me a lesson I have passed on to students since. That is to avoid being too focused in what you learn about your field. A student should seek a broad familiarity and understanding of the field in which they work as part of what motivates their work and for the context of their work in that field.
 
I worked with Van one other time. Many years later in the early 1990's I visited U. of Iowa with a video director and camera person to interview Van about the Inner Magnetosphere Imager concept that was at that time being considered for inclusion in NASA's space science program. As you might expect Van gave an excellent interview that became part of what was needed to promote the concept of an all-remote sensing mission to the terrestrial magnetosphere. NASA management accepted the idea and later selected the IMAGE mission as the realization of everyone's dream of imaging the plasma around the earth. Much like Van's work with Explorer 1, he again played an important role in bringing to space science an innovative mission that has changed the way we explore Geospace.

Dennis L. Gallagher, PhD
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
National Space Science & Technology Center
Space Science Office, VP62, Deputy Manager
320 Sparkman Drive
Huntsville, Ala.

My association with Van Allen started with the frenzied activity in government circles upon announcement of his discovery and I was a staff member of the Guided
Missile Research Division of the Ramo Wooldridge Corporatoin then the major consultants for the Western Development of the U.S. Air Force Headquarters the ballistic missile manager of the major intercontinental missile programs of the U.S. This lead to a generous level of aid including the lending of techniques and a supply of ion chhambers for flights on the NASA/Air Force/GSFC Able program of Pioneer 1,2, and 5 space probes, and Explorer 6 which were companions to Van Allen's Explorer series of flights and for which my group prepared the NASA/Air Force instrument payloads. His
generosity was unbounded and I appreciated our relation and his kindness which continues through my transfer to NASA Headquarters and assumption of Chief of
Sciences of the Lunar and Planatary programs.

Charles P. Sonett
Regents Professor Emeritus
Planetary Sciences
University of Arizona
Lunar & Planetary Laboratory
Tucson, Ariz.

John W. Freeman, Jr.
MS 1961 (Van Allen)
PhD 1963 (Van Allen)
Professor Emeritus and Research Professor
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Director of the Master of Liberal Studies Program
Glasscock School of Continuing Studies
Rice University
Houston, Texas

Van has many major scientific accomplishments to his credit, but I recall being struck particularly by his racoon experiments, in which he put a counter up through an auroral sheet for the first time. The altitude of 100 km was simply unattainable at that time with the sounding rockets available to the community of mortals.  So Van devised the trick of carrying a four inch diameter (as I recall) rocket on a balloon to an altitude of eighty thousand feet or so, and firing the rocket from there. Without the heavy drag of the lower atmosphere to impede it, the rocket went up over 100 km for the first direct encounter with an auroral sheet. The ingenuity of the balloon-rocket scheme just took my breath away when I first read about it. So simple in retrospect, as are all great ideas.

Gene Parker
Professor Emeritus
Department of Physics
University of Chicago

My first distinct memory of Van occurred in the academic year 1961-62 when I was a sophomore.  Van decided to teach a class on radio astronomy.  The course number indicated it was an undergraduate level class, so several of us astronomy/physics majors registered for it.  Of course, Van had become a household name by then, having just been on the cover of Time magazine and all, so at the first meeting of the class, there were the 5 or 6 undergrads, a large bunch of physics grad students and a very large bunch of non-physics students who had come to see the 'great man'.  Van took one look at the near-standing room class and announced that we would have an exam in the next session. Sure enough, the next session came, we had the exam, and all the non-physics people suddenly dropped the course. However, we undergraduates didn't fare too well on the exam either and we were very concerned trying to compete with all the grad students, so we went as a delegation to Vans office (old physics building). He told us, 'Guys, stick with it -- I'll take care of you'. And he was true to his word. I've been a radio astronomer my entire career due in no small way to his early encouragement during this first course.

Michael L. Kaiser
UI undergrad class of 1964
STEREO Project Scientist
NASA/GSFC/Code 695
Greenbelt, Md.

I learned the name of Van Allen through a textbook of Earth Sciences when I was in high school in Taiwan. I never met Prof. Van Allen, but I had a "silent" contact with him. After I published the Shue et al. [1997] magnetopause location model, Prof. Van Allen
sent me a reprint of his paper [Observed Currents on the Earth's High-Latitude Magnetopause, Journal of Geophysical Research, 97, 6381-6395, 1992]. I was really surprised and feeling honored of receiving it. Although I did not know exactly why he sent me the reprint, I knew it was related to my magnetopause model. I recall that it was the lowest point of my career at that time. The reprint worked as a true encouragement to me and helped me walk out of the lowest point. I really appreciate
Prof. Van Allen for his magical reprint.

Jih-Hong Shue
Associate Professor
Institute of Space Science
National Central University
Jhongli, Taiwan

During his 90th birthday celebrations, Dr. Van Allen took me aside, and revealed that Roger Revelle had tried to attract him to La Jolla. Later, on Oct. 12, 2004, he wrote:
'... In response to your question of how you came to receive a faculty offer at UCSD: I have a clear recollection of a visit here by Roger Revelle and another senior person ... who described the plans for developing a new (primarily graduate level) university in La Jolla. They gave me a strong sales pitch as to why I should join the faculty there. I listened carefully but told them that I was really not interested in leaving Iowa, but that I had an outstanding Ph.D. student (namely you) whom they might wish to consider. I "believe" that their visit was in the spring or autumn of 1960. ...'

I received a call from La Jolla in March 1961, and while visiting there, they asked if I 'needed' an Associate Professorship. I, of course said "yes", naively not realizing that it involved the question of tenure. Later, Dr. Van Allen must have written a VERY good letter of recommendation; it enabled the people at ‘UCLJ’ to convince Clark Kerr, the President of the University of California and the Regents, that a tenured position should be given to a person fresh out of graduate school.

In my January 1962 letter of resignation from SUI, I wrote: "I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the time and energy which you have expended in guiding and assisting me in my efforts to become a physicist. It is my fond hope that in my new position I can create the same kind of stimulating and fertile environment which you
have created at SUI."

Dr. Van Allen and I had many encounters during the following decades, and I often reiterated my appreciation for his guidance and assistance.

Carl McIlwain
M.S. 1956 (Van Allen)
Ph.D. 1960 (Van Allen)
Research Professor
University of California San Diego
La Jolla, California

I first heard the name "James Van Allen" while attending a lecture in Johnson City, TN by Dr. Werner von Braun between my college Junior and Senior years in the summer of 1960.  Dr. von Braun was describing the space program up to that point in time and noted in his lecture that although the launch of the Pioneer 3 space probe toward the moon had failed to reach the critical velocity necessary to escape and had fallen back to the Earth, Dr. James Van Allen of the University of Iowa was very pleased with getting a second pass through the radiation belts that bear his name.  On the basis of that lecture and my interest in the space program I decided to go to the University of Iowa after graduating from Va Tech in 1961.  I arrived on campus in September of that year and first met Dr. Van Allen at class registration not fully realizing the tremendous impact that this person would have on the rest of my life.

I stayed at Iowa until 1968 first as a graduate student, NASA trainee, and then as a research associate obtaining a Masters degree in 1964 and a PhD degree in 1967 with Dr. Van Allen serving as my thesis advisor for both degrees.  I worked on the Injun 3, Injun 5, and OGO-4 experiment programs that Dr. Van Allen had organized.  In the case of Injun 3, I was called into his office while a second year graduate student and asked if I would be willing to "run" the satellite.  This was an amazing opportunity in retrospect.  I interfaced with NASA and their system of ground tracking stations, a number of private tracking stations, and was in charge of the tracking station located in the basement of the old Physics Building on the Pentacrest.  The data returned from this satellite formed the basis of PhD theses of Donald Gurnett, Thomas Armstrong, and others as well as myself.

The program that Dr. Van Allen had put in place produced a majority of the Space Physicists in the US.  In this program Dr. Van Allen gave significant responsibility to the graduate students in the design, fabrication, testing, and calibrating of the experimental hardware that his program produced for the space program.  This experience was essentially unique in the exposure of graduate students to the requirements to produce a piece of spaceflight hardware that would provide a definitive test of the theories being discussed in the literature and at scientific meetings.  His graduate students learned to take the responsibility he gave to them and to develop the hardware within a constrained time frame and budget. 

I left Iowa to take on two post-doctorial positions, then permanent positions with NOAA in Boulder, CO, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in NM, and now at Boston University (BU) in MA.  In many ways I have continued to do what I was doing in Iowa-building experiments that will fly on satellites and space probes to measure radiation trapped in planetary magnetic fields, mostly involving the magnetosphere of the Earth. After working in two government sponsored research laboratories I realized how unique the experience that I had gained at Iowa working in the Van Allen group really was as I tried to find those recent university graduates who could take an ideal and then produce a functional piece of spaceflight hardware to test the idea. When the opportunity came to become a professor within the Center for Space Physics at BU I accepted it as a challenge to put in place a program modeled after that which Dr. Van Allen had in place during the 1950s through the 1990s at Iowa.  I am happy to say that I have a research group that is fabricating spaceflight hardware at BU involving some seven graduate students and a similar number of undergraduate students, all with significant responsibility for specific aspects of the spaceflight hardware and testing.

My wife, whom I met while a graduate student at Iowa, has many family ties in the vicinity of Iowa City.  We visit a couple of times each year and I usually take a day to visit Van Allen Hall and see "the boss".  This was about as informal as I ever came in talking either with him or about him.  These visits have always been rewarding as we would describe to each other what we have been doing since we last talked.  It always amazed me how Dr. Van Allen could lay his hands on an item or reference that came up in the conversation by walking back into the "stacks", the rows of shelving in his 7th floor corner office/lab that contained his personal library and history of his professional career.  On one such visit in early January following the Christmas break I dropped by and found the office locked.  I checked with the assistant of Don Gurnett, Kathy Kurth, and was told that Dr. Van Allen had broken his ankle while taking some boxes to the trash can during Christmas activities.  He apparently had not realized it was broken and had limped around for a few days before having it x-rayed.  I decided to go to his home and found him in a bathrobe having just had his cast replaced.  We sat in the kitchen and had a great visit during which he apologized for not being in his office.  Even with an obvious reason for not following his normal routine he still felt that he should be working in his office.  He certainly had a great impact on my life and my career.

Theodore A. Fritz
Professor, Boston University
Department of Astronomy, College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering
Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

It was with a very real sense of loss that I read of Professor Van Allen's death.  I suspect that I am one of a very large number of people whose lives were fundamentally and positively influenced by Professor Van Allen.  I write this brief description of my interactions with him with the hope that it may be of some interest to the Van Allen family.

In 1962 I had completed my course work for a Ph. D. in Political Science at the University of Iowa and was seeking to identify a topic for my dissertation.  My adviser, Vernon Van Dyke, had just read an announcement that Professor Van Allen would lead a Summer Study aimed at answering the question:  "What should the Astronauts do when they get on the moon?"  One distinguished British astronomer who was part of the Summer Study would follow this question with: "In addition to picking up green cheese?"

Van Dyke suggested I go see Van Allen and ask if I could sit in on the Summer Study and perhaps develop a dissertation topic in the general area of space policy.  I still remember going over to ask Professor Van Allen's secretary whether or not I could get an appointment to talk with him.  Clearly one of the Secretary's responsibilities was to protect Van Allen's time and I remember being totally intimidated by her.  Nonetheless, I was quickly scheduled for an appointment because students were one Van Allen's weaknesses.  Faculty, I was later told usually had to wait longer for an appointment.

I recall walking into an office that was full of tables stacked high with piles of paper; I think much of it was computer printout.  Professor Van Allen could not be seen, at his desk in the back of the room; he was completely hidden by these stacks of paper.  At this point I had a sense of having violated the sacred space and time of someone who was doing important things.  I quickly made my request for space in the Summer Study, although I was braced for a No.  Van Allen asked me to take a seat, he had to clean off a chair, and we then talked for over an hour.  I told him my interest was in international relations and he then described for me his cooperation with Soviet colleagues.  I remember asking him how the U.S. security system would let this kind of cooperation take place and he said he was sure no one in the security system could understand what he and his Soviet colleagues were doing.

At the end of our meeting Van Allen's answer was yes.  I spent the following summer, I think about ten weeks, listening, with fascination, to discussions among some of the world's leading space scientists.  Although my family, my wife and I and our six-month old daughter, were living on a graduate assistantship and the GI bill, I went to lunch at the downtown hotel nearly everyday with this group of eminences.  The luncheon discussions were as informative as the formal sessions.  During nearly every lunch someone remarked, not with total admiration, on the propensity of Iowans to eat jello.  I had the sense that only Professor Van Allen and I, both Iowans, had the sophisticated taste needed to appreciate jello.

As a result of the Summer Study I developed a dissertation proposal that focused on international cooperation in space.  I began work on this in the library and especially benefited from access to Professor Van Dyke's note cards.  He was by this time on leave in Washington, D.C. working on a book on the space program.

It became clear that I would need to go to Washington, D.C. for several weeks to interview people involved in the space program.  Our family resources were not sufficient to fund the interview trip so once again I went to Professor Van Allen to ask whether he thought I might be able to get support from NASA.  He said, "Let me check into this.  How much money do you need?"  I indicated that I was sure six hundred dollars would cover my costs.

Two days later I had a call from Van Allen's secretary who indicated that he wanted me to stop by that day.  Van Allen told me that the NASA people had told him it would cost them at least five thousand dollars to process my six hundred dollar request; thus Van Allen said he would provide the funds from his travel account.  A month of so later I was given six hundred dollars in cash and I headed off to Washington where I spent nearly six weeks.  When I returned I gave him about thirty-five dollars, the portion of the six hundred I had not spent.  He said, "You know, I wouldn't have objected if you had had a few steaks."

The interview trip was a great success primarily because Professor Van Allen had called ahead to arrange interviews for me with all of the major figures associated with the Man on the Moon program.  Not only was I able to get an initial interview with everyone I contacted, but I easily got several repeat interviews.  I initially found this to be remarkable, but such was Van Allen's influence.  I should note, in addition, that in those days the space policy system was just being developed and part of the reason my repeat interviews came so easily was that I was talking to everyone of influence and with each cycle of interviews I was being ask by the people I was interviewing what others on my interview list were saying.  This was my first experience with the importance of networked information in Washington.

I completed my dissertation in record time, it was published as a book and helped launch my forty plus year career as a professor. Many years later I was given a Distinguished Alumni Award by the University of Iowa and when I arrived for dinner to my great surprise there sat Professor Van Allen.  That was the real honor of the evening.  Professor Van Allen has been and remains an important model for me 

Don E. Kash
Hazel Professor
George Mason University

I grew up in Burlington, Iowa, just a stones throw from Mt Pleasant, where Dr. Van Allen was raised.  I came to the University of Iowa after two years of college at BJC and the University of Wyoming.  I was rescued from working in a saw mill in Wyoming when I received a small scholarship and assistanceship in the SUI Physics Dept in 1959.  A long time ago.  Looking back, I'm sure that Dr Van Allen was personally instrumental in my attaining this help.  Because of this I was able to pursue and achieve a Bachelor of Arts in Physics (ironic that, being in the Liberal Arts Department, a Bachelor of Science wasn't offered - but I'd never have been eligible for the Phi Beta Kappa honor if it was).
  
Several things stick out when I remember Dr. Van Allen.  It seems to me he honored every person's capabilities - be they genius researchers or lowly support workers - with the knowledge that it took all levels of talent and ability to bring the larger goal to fruition - and he treated everyone with the utmost respect.
  
A particular memory is one of him doing something that I cosidered bordering on genius.  When asked a perplexing question (one that most of us would have stood there stammering in response to) Van would reach into his pocket and pull out his pipe.  With great care he would fill the bowl with tobacco, tamp it down, carefully light it, and stand there puffing for a moment.  Only then would he begin to construct an answer.  I observed this ploy many times, and each time I was amazed that everyone stood patiently watching, as if a master was at work.  "Buying time", I guess, but so endearing.  
  
I took a senior level Electricity and Magnetism class from Van, and he was a wonder-ful teacher.  His exams were notorious for having questions (problems to solve) which took a good understanding of the theory to grasp the "trick" necessary for their solution.  They usually consisted of 4 problems, that on the surface looked excru-ciatingly hard, but that could be solved totally on one sheet of paper if you knew the "tricks".  So, if you were laboring away, filling up the test booklet with calculations, you knew you were on the wrong track.  But it was a great help in learning to peel away the outer complexity to find the inner simplicity.  
  
When I was nearing my Masters degree, it became apparent that I was not going to pursue further schooling (I was married with one son and another on the way - and totally broke).  I went to Van (scared to death) to see if there wasn't some thesis subject he could provide that would accelerate achieving my degree.  He was gracious enough to do just that, for which I am eternally grateful.  
As for being awarded Phi Beta Kappa, thanks for that must go directly to Dr Van Allen.

At the time, I was so naive I didn't even know what it was.  I had already received an offer for some other award through the mail, wanting $$ for the member-ship.  Like a fool, I responded that if they wanted to give me an award, that was fine, but I shouldn't have to pay for it.  When I received another such letter, I told my neighbor (who was much more worldly than I) I'd received another of "those award offers that want $$".  He asked what it was, and when I told him Phi Beta Kappa, he responded that if I sent this one back, he'd break my neck.  Suffice it to say I was honored to be honored, and I have only Dr Van Allen to thank - I would never have been so honored without his intervention.  But I've always wondered - why me??  I mean, in my class and among my collegues were Don Gurnett, Lou Frank, Don Stillwell, John Freeman, John Craven, Tom Krimigis, Ron Gabel, et al.  Come on - get real!!  I guess now I'll never know.

I subsequently made my career in aerospace as a control systems engineer, and had many challanging and rewarding years in that field.  But my memories of Dr James Van Allen and my days in the basement of the SUI Physics Building (where I was one of those lowly support workers toiling on the latest artificial satellite) are something I will treasure all my days.  I am thankful I made the trip to Iowa City in 2004 for Van's 90th birthday.  He was deservedly a well-loved man. I can't imagine what it will be like around there without him.

Michael Wiemer
BA - 1961
MS - 1964

As his first graduate student at SUI, I have many, many very fond and personal memories of Van, both personal and professional. To give but a few:

• His filling weather balloons on the SUI football practice field for my MS.
• Going with him to WSPG test fire a Rockoon off a “clothesline”.
• His finding in his notebooks the answer for seemingly any problem I brought him.
• His plugging my firing system into the nozzle of each of our live rockets on the ice breaker prior to launch for my PhD.
• Going to Princeton with him to build an early nuclear fusion Stellarator test model.
• His getting a certified check for me so the movers could unload and get our kids off the floor on a football weekend in Princeton when all the banks were closed.
• Our family having its first lobster at his and Abbie’s place on Long Island Sound.
• After my PhD under him, his first at SUI, suggesting I apply to NRL for a rocket program position, he’d clearly greased the skids.
• Working with him when he was AGU President and I was General Secretary, another position for me which I am sure he helped make happen.
• Teaching Physics to one of my kids.
• Sending a long, hand written letter of condolences when my Dad died.
• Only a few months ago, sending a Press Citizen clipping on one of our Grandsons.
• Always calling a spade a spade regardless of the politics.
• His unwavering position that manned space flight would hurt Space Science, which is becoming truer and truer.

He was a truly good person who didn’t just a talk but all through his long and very productive life worked as hard, dirty hands and all, as any graduate student while at the same time, with his wife Abbie, building a wonderful and loving family. This is the very highest compliment I can think of but it hardly does him justice. Sorry Van.

Les Meredith
NASA/GSFC retired