Here are two stories about a couple of pioneers of astronomy, physics and space exploration – Clyde Tombaugh and James Van Allen, and their amazing journeys through life and death.
Clyde Tombaugh
WASHINGTON – In articles about his life, they always called Clyde Tombaugh "a Kansas farm boy," as if to draw sharp contrast with the cosmic magnitude of his signature achievement. Discovering a planet, after all, is a rare distinction, and Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930, is the only American to discover one of the nine named planets in our solar system.
His story sounds too all-American storybook to be true, as though Frank Capra and Horatio Alger somehow conspired to come up with the unlikely tale. When he discovered Pluto, Tombaugh lacked a college education, having taught himself the fundamentals of astronomy on the family farm north of Burdett, Kan. Endless hours in the fields imbued Tombaugh with a love of the stars. The sky just looks bigger, more intense out there with nothing to block it, said Tombaugh’s daughter, Annette Tombaugh-Sitze. ….
Tombaugh-Sitze said questions about whether Pluto merited the status of a planet always bothered her father. But she’s sure he’s having the last laugh: His ashes are aboard a research spaceship hurtling toward a 2015 encounter with Pluto, his majestic discovery, whatever it is.
"Dad’s on a great adventure," she said."
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James Van Allen
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – Physicist James A. Van Allen, a leader in space exploration who discovered the radiation belts surrounding the Earth that now bear his name, died Wednesday [Aug 9, 2006]. He was 91.
The University of Iowa, where he taught for years, announced the death in a statement on its Web site.
In a career that stretched over more than a half-century, Van Allen designed scientific instruments for dozens of research flights, first with small rockets and balloons, and eventually with space probes that traveled to distant planets and beyond.
Van Allen gained global attention in the late 1950s when instruments he designed and placed aboard the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I, discovered the bands of intense radiation that surround the earth, now known as the Van Allen Belts.
The bands spawned a whole new field of research known as magnetospheric physics, an area of study that now involves more than 1,000 investigators in more than 20 countries.
The discovery also propelled the United States in its space exploration race with the Soviet Union and prompted Time magazine to put Van Allen on the cover of its May 4, 1959, issue.
The folksy, pipe-smoking scientist, called “Van” by friends, retired from full-time teaching in 1985. But he continued to write, oversee research, counsel students and monitor data gathered by satellites. He worked in a large, cluttered corner office on the seventh floor of the physics and astronomy building that bears his name.
"Jim Van Allen was a good friend of our family. His loss saddens Christie and me,” Gov. Tom Vilsack said. "His passing is a sad day for science in America and the world.
Though he was an early advocate of a concerted national space program, Van Allen was a strong critic of most manned space projects, once dismissing the U.S. proposal for a manned space station "speculative and … poorly founded.”
In 2004, he spoke out again, arguing against Bush administration plans for a space station on the moon and a manned mission to Mars.
"I’m one of the most durable and fervent advocates of space exploration, but my take is that we could do it robotically at far less cost and far greater quantity and quality of results,” he said.
I’ll end with an amusing anecdote as related by Bengali author, Sunil Ganguly (aka Sunil Gangopadhyay) in his reminiscence, Ardhek Jiban (Half A Life) that I read some years ago. As a budding young author, Ganguly lived in Iowa City and attended the famous Writers’ Workshop of the University of Iowa. One day, he was to attend a university banquet and while getting ready for the event, discovered that he couldn’t find the one and only belt he possessed. When his host, a professor at UI came to pick him up, Ganguly explained his problem. The professor said that he had to pick up another professor from his home on the way to the banquet and perhaps Ganguly would be able to borrow a belt there. That professor whom they went to pick up next was James Van Allen – who lent Ganguly one of his own belts. The author joked in his book that he therefore earned the bragging rights to have actually worn one of Van Allen’s Belts.
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