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Washington Evening Journal
111 North Marion Avenue
Washington, IA 52353
319-653-2191
Henry County Heritage celebrates Van Allen’s 111th Birthday
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
Two- to three-dozen people enjoyed the afternoon celebrating what would have been Dr. James Van Allen's 111th birthday on Sunday! He was born Sept. 7, 1914. It was a great day. Sue Loescher and Rosemary Peck organized the afternoon of science activities. Kids and parents came early, played games, made ice cream to eat with the cake. Making ice cream in a bag was the hit of the day!
A second group, mostly adults, came later and toured the Van Allen House and the Heritage Center Museum. (The Iowa Hawkeye-ISU Cyclone football game is always stiff competition with the annual event!)
This group did make it in time to eat ice cream and cake. Special guests David Van Allen and his sister Marti Van Allen were in attendance. Their personal recollections were a great help and enjoyed by all. The house demonstrates the frugality of the family as well as the importance of maintenance and keeping everything functional.
The New Netherland Institute, a group dedicated to exploring America’s Dutch Heritage, published the following observation by Michael Griffin, a NASA administrator, upon Van Allen’s death in 2006.
“James Van Allen was one of the greatest and most accomplished American space scientists of our time, and few researchers had such a 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 groundbreaking work.”
Van Allen attended undergraduate school at Iowa’s Wesleyan College, in Mount Pleasant. Under the guidance of his physics professor, Thomas Poulter, Van Allen participated in experiments tracking meteors, conducting magnetic surveys of Mount Pleasant, and measuring cosmic rays at ground-level. He was awarded his Bachelor of Science degree summa cum laude in 1935. Van Allen then entered the University of Iowa, and earned his master’s degree in solid state physics, in 1936. Three years later, in 1939, he earned his Ph.D. in solid state physics, also from the University of Iowa.
