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]
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