Who Was J. Allen Hynek?

Term: Close encounter of the first kind: a UFO seen at close range with no physical evidence left behind.

Term: Close encounter of the second kind: a UFO encounter that leaves physical evidence, such as ground marks or effects on witnesses.

Term: Close encounter of the third kind: a UFO encounter in which beings are reported.

Term: Center for UFO Studies: the research group Hynek founded in 1973 in Evanston, Illinois.

Who Was J. Allen Hynek?

J. Allen Hynek was an American astronomer who served as the Air Force’s scientific consultant on UFOs from 1948 until Project Blue Book closed in 1969. He began as a skeptic. He came to believe that a small share of reports deserved serious scientific study, and he spent the rest of his life arguing for it. He created the close encounter scale and founded the Center for UFO Studies.

An astronomer first

Josef Allen Hynek was born in Chicago on May 1, 1910. He earned a degree in astronomy at the University of Chicago and a doctorate in astrophysics at Yerkes Observatory. He joined the faculty of Ohio State University in 1936. During World War II he worked at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory on the radio proximity fuze. In 1960 he moved to Northwestern University in Illinois to chair its astronomy department.

The Air Force consultant

The Air Force hired Hynek in 1948, while he was at Ohio State, to review UFO reports for astronomical explanations. He served on Project Sign, then Project Grudge, then Project Blue Book. He later wrote that the job did not seem like it would take much time. He was also an associate member of the 1953 Robertson Panel, which recommended playing down the subject.

His work was to look at each report and decide whether a planet, star, meteor, or other astronomical object could explain it. Many could. Over time he met witnesses and cases he could not explain that way.

The 1966 swamp gas controversy

In March 1966, people in Michigan reported lights and objects near a swamp. Hynek investigated and suggested that swamp gas might explain some of it. The explanation was widely ridiculed. The episode made him a national figure and pushed him toward the belief that the Air Force was handling the subject poorly. A House Armed Services Committee hearing followed in April 1966. At that hearing he said he had seen no evidence confirming extraterrestrial visitors and knew no competent scientist who believed in them. He also proposed a panel of civilian scientists to decide whether a real problem existed.

His criticism of Blue Book

By the late 1960s Hynek was openly critical. In October 1968 he wrote to the Air Force that Blue Book’s staff was inadequate, that it worked as a closed system, and that its statistical methods were a travesty. He said the project spent too much time on routine cases and not enough on the few significant ones. He noted that critics had called Blue Book the Society for the Explanation of the Uninvestigated.

Close encounters

In 1972 Hynek published The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, written largely in response to the Condon Report. In it he laid out the three kinds of close encounters. The first is a sighting at close range. The second leaves physical evidence. The third involves reported beings. He also wrote that ridicule is not part of the scientific method.

He founded the Center for UFO Studies in 1973, after a wave of sightings in Mississippi. Through the 1970s he worked with researcher Jacques Vallée, and the two co-wrote The Edge of Reality in 1975. In 1977 Steven Spielberg named a film Close Encounters of the Third Kind after Hynek’s scale. Hynek served as a technical advisor and appeared in a cameo. In 1978 he addressed a United Nations committee about the subject. He retired from Northwestern that year and died on April 27, 1986.

What Hynek did and did not conclude

Hynek concluded that a real, unexplained residue of reports deserved study by scientists. He believed Blue Book was built to close cases and not to solve them. He did not conclude that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft. He told Congress in 1966 that he had seen no evidence of that, and in 1975 he co-wrote The Edge of Reality with Vallée, which examined the phenomenon more broadly.

He also left a caution. The Air Force’s own final position was that none of the unidentified cases represented technology beyond current knowledge. Hynek disagreed with how that conclusion was reached, and he did not claim to have proof of anything more.

Why Hynek matters

He was a credentialed scientist who took the reports seriously while the government mocked them. In my book Disclosure: They Are Not Extraterrestrials, I include him among the key people in the story. His experience shows how an honest skeptic can change his mind by looking at the cases. It also shows why a serious investigation needs both open minds and careful methods. Disclosure is available on Amazon. You can find more of my work at ckqbooks.com.

Sources

Northwestern University Archives, J. Allen Hynek Papers. Center for UFO Studies, J. Allen Hynek biography (cufos.org). J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience (1972). House Armed Services Committee hearing, April 5, 1966. History.com, Meet J. Allen Hynek. Wikipedia, Project Blue Book.