James Alfred Van Allen was an American space scientist at the University of Iowa. He was instrumental in establishing the field of magnetospheric research in space. James A. Van Allen was born in Mount Pleasant, Iowa on September 7, 1914. He enrolled in the University of Iowa where he received a Master of Science degree in Physics in 1936, and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics in 1939. In April 1942, James Van Allen began working at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, helping to develop a rugged vacuum tube. He also assisted in the invention of proximity fuses for weapons, especially for anti-aircraft projectiles used by the U.S. Navy. By the fall of 1942, he had been commissioned as an officer in the Navy and was sent to the Pacific Theater to field test and complete operational requirements for the proximity fuses. Van Allen wrote numerous papers and journal articles. He also edited Scientific Uses of Earth Satellites (1956) and was an associate editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research (1959–64) and Physics of Fluids (1958–62). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1959 and was president of the American Geophysical Union from 1982 to 1984. In 1987 he was awarded the National Medal of Science.