![\"foerstner-vanallen.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/128.255.6.211\/news\/files\/2008\/01\/foerstner-vanallen.jpg\")
Abigail Foerstner, author of James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles<\/em>, will visit the University of Iowa Libraries to discuss her approach to researching and writing this biography on Friday, February 1 at 10 a.m. in the Special Collections classroom on the third floor of the Main Library.<\/p>\nShe spent seven years researching and writing James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles<\/a><\/em>. Foerstner blends space science drama, military agendas, cold war politics, and the events of Van Allen\u2019s lengthy career to create the \ufb01rst biography of this highly influential physicist. Drawing on Van Allen\u2019s correspondence and publications, years of interviews with him as well as with more than a hundred other scientists, and declassified documents from such archives as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Kennedy Space Center, and the Applied Physics Laboratory, Foerstner describes Van Allen\u2019s life from his Iowa childhood to his \ufb01rst experiments at White Sands to the years of Explorer I until his death in 2006.<\/p>\n Foerstner teaches science writing and news writing <\/a>in the graduate program at Northwestern University\u2019s Medill School of Journalism; she is the author of Picturing Utopia: Bertha Shambaugh and the Amana Photographers<\/em> (Iowa, 2000)<\/a> and of hundreds of articles on science, history, and the visual arts. As a staff reporter for the suburban sections of the Chicago Tribune, she covered science and the environment for nearly ten years.<\/p>\n The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Kristi Bontrager<\/a>, UI Libraries Public Relations Coordinator at 335-5960 or Allison Thomas<\/a>, University of Iowa Press at\u00a0 319-335-2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How do you go about writing the biography of one of the country\u2019s most influential physicists of the 20th century? Where do you find primary source information and how do you write compelling prose based on scientific notes? Abigail Foerstner, author of James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles, will visit the University ofContinue reading “Van Allen Biographer Visits UI Libraries – Feb 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[],"syndication":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"syndication","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/syndication?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"abigailfoerstner_21.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/128.255.6.211\/news\/files\/2008\/01\/abigailfoerstner_21.jpg\")
In this hands-on discussion, Forestner will share some of the unique documents and interesting stories she found in the Van Allen papers located in the University Archives.<\/p>\n