University of Iowa in the context of "James Van Allen"

Johnson County is located in the U.S. state of Iowa. As of the 2020 census, the population was 152,854, making it the fourth-most populous county in Iowa. The county seat is Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa. Johnson County is included in the Iowa City metropolitan area, which is also included in the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City Corridor Combined Statistical Area.

Leon Festinger (8 May 1919 – 11 February 1989) was an American social psychologist who originated the theory of cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. The rejection of the previously dominant behaviorist view of social psychology by demonstrating the inadequacy of stimulus-response conditioning accounts of human behavior is largely attributed to his theories and research. Festinger is also credited with advancing the use of laboratory experimentation in social psychology, although he simultaneously stressed the importance of studying real-life situations, a principle he practiced when personally infiltrating a doomsday cult. He is also known in social network theory for the proximity effect (or propinquity).

Festinger studied psychology under Kurt Lewin, an important figure in modern social psychology, at the University of Iowa, graduating in 1941; however, he did not develop an interest in social psychology until after joining the faculty at Lewin's Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1945. Despite his preeminence in social psychology, Festinger turned to visual perception research in 1964 and then archaeology, history, and the human evolutionary sciences in 1979 until his death in 1989. Following B. F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Bandura, Festinger was the fifth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Richard Anthony Fumerton (born October 7, 1949) is a Canadian American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa with research interests in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and value theory. He has been cited as an influential expert on the position of "metaepistemological scepticism". He received his B.A. in philosophy from the University of Toronto in 1971 and his M.A. and PhD from Brown University in 1973 and 1974, respectively. He has been the F. Wendell Miller Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa since 2003.

Dr. Leslie A. Baxter is an American scholar and teacher in communication studies, best known for her research on family and relational communication. Her work is focused on relationships: romantic, marital, and friendly. She is best known for her Relational Dialectics theory. She is a professor emeritus at The University of Iowa's department of Communication Studies.

Kurt Zadek Lewin or Kurt Tsadek Lewin (/ˈluːɪn, ləˈviːn/ LOO-in, lə-VEEN; German: [leˈviːn]; 9 September 1890 – 12 February 1947) was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. During his professional career, Lewin's academic research and writings focuses on applied research, action research, and group communication.

Lewin is often recognized as the "founder of social psychology" and was one of the first to study group dynamics and organizational development. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Lewin as the 18th-most cited psychologist of the 20th century. During his career, he was affiliated with several U.S. and European universities, including the University of Berlin, Cornell University, MIT, Stanford University, and the University of Iowa.

Iowa City is the largest city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States, and its county seat. The population was 74,828 at the 2020 census, making it the state's fifth-most populous city. The Iowa City metropolitan area, which encompasses Johnson and Washington counties, has a population of over 171,000. The metro area is also a part of a combined statistical area with the Cedar Rapids metro area known as the Iowa City–Cedar Rapids region; collectively, this region has a population of nearly 500,000.

Iowa City is the home of the University of Iowa. It was the second capital of the Iowa Territory and the first capital of the state of Iowa; the Old Capitol building is a National Historic Landmark at the center of the University of Iowa campus. The University of Iowa Art Museum and Plum Grove Historic House, the home of the first governor of Iowa, are also tourist attractions.

David Jay Bordwell (/ˈbɔːrdwəl/; July 23, 1947 – February 29, 2024) was an American film theorist and film historian. After receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1973, he wrote more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including Narration in the Fiction Film (1985), Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (1988), Making Meaning (1989), and On the History of Film Style (1997).

With his wife Kristin Thompson, Bordwell wrote the textbooks Film Art (1979) and Film History (1994). Film Art, in its 12th edition as of 2019, is still used as a text in introductory film courses. With aesthetics philosopher Noël Carroll, Bordwell edited the anthology Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (1996), a polemic on the state of contemporary film theory. His largest work was The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (1985), written in collaboration with Thompson and Janet Staiger. Several of his more influential articles on theory, narrative, and style were collected in Poetics of Cinema (2007), named in homage to the famous anthology of Russian formalist film theory Poetika Kino, edited by Boris Eikhenbaum in 1927.

Frank Orren Lowden (January 26, 1861 – March 20, 1943) was an American Republican Party politician who served as the 25th governor of Illinois and as a United States representative from Illinois. He was also a candidate for the Republican presidential nominations in 1920 and 1928.

Born in Sunrise Township, Minnesota, Lowden practiced law in Chicago after graduating from the University of Iowa. He emerged as a local Republican leader and served in the House of Representatives from 1906 to 1911. He served as Governor of Illinois from 1917 to 1921, earning wide notice for his reorganization of state government and his handling of the Chicago race riot of 1919.