Mrs. Van Allen, Members of the Van Allen Family, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a great privilege and honor for me to stand here on this day of remembrance and celebration of the "Father of the Space Age" and my beloved teacher and mentor, James A. Van Allen.

Officially, I am representing the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of Johns Hopkins University to express the appreciation and gratitude that APL felt for having had Dr. Van Allen as a "plank owner" when the laboratory was established in the spring of 1942 to assist the Navy in the war effort by designing the "Proximity Fuze." Dr. Van Allen was instrumental in the successful development of this fuze, and it was Navy Lieutenant James Van Allen who was then dispatched to the Pacific fleet in 1942 with a load of the new antiaircraft shells, to teach the gunnery officers the use of this new weapon; and a very effective weapon it was. As Navy Secretary James Forrestal said in 1945, "Without the Proximity Fuze, our westward advance across the Pacific could not have been so swift, and the cost in men and ships would have been immeasurably higher."

Back at APL since November of 1944 "the most important event in my life occurred . . ." as he stated many years later. He was involved in a minor bumper-to-bumper car accident with a lady by the name of Abigail Halsey while they were both on route to work, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history. By the way, Abbie was working as a mathematician trying to reduce the other major errors in the antiaircraft problem, namely those of pointing.

As soon as the war was over, however, Dr. Van Allen went back to his first love, namely chasing the intensity of cosmic rays at high altitudes. Because there was a new tool available, the captured V-2 rockets that the Army was going to test-fire, there was the opportunity to include instruments as part the payload that could reach over 100 miles in altitude. Dr. Van Allen's High Altitude Research Section at APL built cosmic ray counters, ultraviolet spectrometers and high-speed cameras; and in addition to cosmic rays, measured the UV spectrum of the Sun and took the first pictures of Earth's curved horizon. The experience of building electronics that could withstand acceleration of 20,000g in an artillery shell came in handy, and later helped in building the instruments for Explorers 1, 2, 3, etc., that launched the United States into the space age.

And I would like to close on a personal note. I came to Iowa as a brand new graduate student in the fall of 1961, unsure of myself, not knowing much about the brand new world of space. By the time of my Ph.D. in 1965, Dr. Van Allen had turned me into a confident researcher, ready to tackle almost anything in space science. Dr. Van Allen enabled his students to stand on his shoulders and reach for their dreams. No one could ask for more, and for that, I remain eternally grateful. He was also great in dispensing personal advice. I recall a conversation during a ride in his yellow Volkswagen to the Cedar Rapids airport for some trip to Washington. Having just become a newly minted Assistant Professor, I was subjected to certain "ribbing" by other faculty and their wives for still being unmarried at the ripe age of 27. Recall that in those years (the 60s) most people were married in graduate school. So, Dr. Van Allen turned to me and said, "Well Tom, I wouldn't worry about not being married, because if the lady turns out to be very good, she was well-worth waiting for; if on the other hand you are unlucky, then you won't have to endure it as long."

Mrs. Van Allen, members of the Van Allen family, please accept this memento (image) from the Johns Hopkins University, as a token of our appreciation and gratitude. It includes Dr. Van Allen's signature from a tablet signed by all those who worked on the Proximity Fuze; a picture of Dr. Van Allen at his desk wearing his Navy Lieutenant uniform; a picture with some of his colleagues next to the instrumented nose cone of a V-2 rocket; and a letter to the Van Allen family from Johns Hopkins.

Thank you very much.

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