Van Allen, James Alfred (1914-2006), a physicist, discovered the Van Allen belts, two zones of electrically charged particles that surround Earth. Van Allen’s team of scientists used data from the United States Explorer 1 satellite to make the discovery in 1958 (see Van Allen belts ). Van Allen was born on Sept. 7, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, and graduated from Iowa Wesleyan College and the University of Iowa. He served as head of the University of Iowa department of physics and astronomy from 1951 to 1985. Van Allen died on Aug. 9, 2006.
