J. Allen Hynek
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J. Allen Hynek
J. Allen Hynek (left) with Jacques Vallée.
J. Allen Hynek (left) with Jacques Vallée. Photo: United States Government · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
TypePerson
Also known asHynek, Allen Hynek
On the Timeline20 events, 1950–1994

Josef Allen Hynek (1 May 1910 – 27 April 1986) was an American astronomer and professor who became the best-known scientist in ufology.[1] For more than two decades he was the U.S. Air Force's scientific consultant on UFOs, through Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book.[1][2] He began as a debunker. His remark in 1966 that some Michigan sightings might be "swamp gas" made him a national laughing-stock, and he then publicly called for serious scientific study.[1][2][4] His 1972 book The UFO Experience introduced the "close encounter" classification. Its third category gave Steven Spielberg's 1977 film its title, and Hynek appeared in it.[1][2] In 1973 he founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS).[1] Sceptics accused him of credulity. The writer John Franch argued that his early scepticism hid a lifelong interest in the occult.[1][4]

Early life

Hynek was born on Chicago's West Side to Czech parents, a few days after Halley's Comet passed the Sun. His father made cigars and his mother, Bertha, taught at a grammar school.[1][4] He credited his mother with his interest in astronomy. When he was seven and quarantined with scarlet fever, she read to him from a high-school astronomy textbook.[4] According to Franch, as a teenager Hynek read widely in the occult, especially Rosicrucian writings and Rudolf Steiner. He spent over $100 on Manly Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages.[4] He told Jacques Vallée that he became an astronomer to find "the very limitations of science, the places where it broke down".[4]

Astronomer

Volunteer Moonwatch satellite trackers in Pretoria, South Africa, one of more than 100 teams in the Smithsonian network Hynek helped direct.
Volunteer Moonwatch satellite trackers in Pretoria, South Africa, one of more than 100 teams in the Smithsonian network Hynek helped direct. Photo: Smithsonian Institution Archives · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Hynek took a B.S. at the University of Chicago in 1931 and a PhD in astrophysics at its Yerkes Observatory in 1935, under Otto Struve and William Wilson Morgan.[1] He joined Ohio State University in 1936 and specialised in stellar evolution and spectroscopic binaries. In 1945 he wrote with George Gamow on the origin of the Solar System.[1] His wider career:

  • Wartime. At the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory he helped develop the Navy's radio proximity fuze.[1][2]
  • Ohio State. He became a full professor in 1950 and directed the McMillin Observatory.[1][4]
  • Satellite tracking. In 1956 he joined Fred Whipple at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to direct satellite tracking for the International Geophysical Year. This included Operation Moonwatch, with more than 200 amateur teams, and 12 Baker-Nunn camera stations.[1] After Sputnik's launch in October 1957 he was on television reassuring Americans, and he appeared on the cover of Life.[2]
  • Star Gazer. From 1957 he led Project Star Gazer, an Air Force programme to carry telescopes on high-altitude balloons. When the Air Force cancelled it in 1963, he called the decision "a criminal act".[4]
  • Northwestern. From 1960 until he retired in 1978 he was professor and chairman of astronomy at Northwestern University. He was also secretary of the American Astronomical Society.[1][4]

The Air Force consultant

In 1948 officers from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base asked Hynek, then 37, to help Project Sign sort out which reports had astronomical explanations. "The job didn't seem as though it would take too much time, so I agreed," he recalled.[2] He later said he "enjoyed" debunking and that it was what the Air Force expected.[1] In 1948 he called the subject "utterly ridiculous", a fad that would soon pass.[1]

  • Sign. Of the 237 cases Sign reviewed, his final report put about 32 percent down to astronomical causes and 35 percent to other explanations. Thirteen percent lacked evidence and 20 percent remained unidentified.[2]
  • Mantell. In the 1948 Mantell case he suggested Venus, though he later admitted it would have been too faint to see in daylight. He also proposed a Skyhook balloon, probably correctly.[4]
  • Grudge. He played little part in Grudge, which he said took as its premise that UFOs simply could not exist.[1][2]
  • Blue Book. Blue Book's first head, Edward Ruppelt, called Hynek "one of the most impressive scientists" he met. Hynek considered the project little more than a public-relations exercise after Ruppelt left.[1]
  • The Robertson Panel. In January 1953 he was an associate member of the CIA's Robertson Panel. He later lamented that it made UFOs a disreputable subject.[1] See Hynek on the Robertson Panel's legacy.

In an April 1953 paper in the Journal of the Optical Society of America he wrote that "Ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and people should not be taught that it is."[1] In 1985 he named two reasons for his change of mind. One was the Air Force's "completely negative and unyielding attitude", in which "everything had to have an explanation". The other was the calibre of witnesses such as military pilots.[1][4] Franch notes that by 1952 he was already speculating about a new natural phenomenon he called "nocturnal meandering lights". In 1960 he argued privately that UFOs deserved the study once denied to meteorites.[4]

The Invisible College and Socorro

In 1963 Vallée, then a programmer at Northwestern, became Hynek's close friend. Their private UFO discussion group Hynek nicknamed "the Invisible College", a term first used by the Rosicrucians.[4] Vallée urged him to break with the Air Force, but Hynek was waiting for a single, undeniable case.[4] In April 1964 Blue Book's head, Hector Quintanilla, sent him to Socorro, New Mexico, where police officer Lonnie Zamora had reported an egg-shaped object and two figures. Hynek examined charred plants and four ground impressions. He left "more puzzled now than I arrived", but convinced Zamora had seen something.[4] He also dissented from the Air Force over the Portage County police chase, in which officers pursued a UFO for half an hour.[1]

Swamp gas

After mass sightings near Dexter and Hillsdale, Michigan, in March 1966, Quintanilla sent Hynek to investigate. He interviewed 32 witnesses amid "near-hysteria" and consulted University of Michigan professors.[4] At a packed press conference in Detroit in late March, he suggested that marsh gas might explain at least two of the sightings. He repeatedly stressed that it did not cover UFO reports in general.[1][4] The qualification was ignored. "Swamp gas" became a national joke, and Hynek was mocked as "a puppet of the Air Force".[1][2][4] Representative Gerald Ford demanded congressional hearings.[2][4] See Michigan swamp gas UFO reports.

At the House Armed Services Committee hearing of 5 April 1966, Hynek read a statement that, he told the committee, "has certainly not been dictated by the Air Force".[6] Franch says Quintanilla had not cleared it.[4] Hynek called for a civilian panel of physical and social scientists to examine the data "for the express purpose of determining whether a major problem really exists".[2][4] "The swamp gas episode boomeranged like hell on me and the Air Force," he said later.[4] The panel came as the Condon study, which Hynek dismissed as "a waste of time".[2][4] In October 1968, replying to Colonel Raymond Sleeper of the Foreign Technology Division, he called Blue Book's efforts "totally inadequate". He noted that one wag had dubbed it the "Society for the Explanation of the Uninvestigated".[1] He made his case again in a statement to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics symposium on UFOs in 1968, headed "UFO's merit scientific study".[3] The earlier version of this article placed the "totally inadequate" remark at a 1968 congressional symposium. In the sources read here it comes from his letter to Sleeper.[1]

Quintanilla, in an unpublished manuscript, called Hynek a "liability". Hynek said he stayed on mainly because Blue Book "had the store of data", and his association gave him access to it.[2] His contract lapsed when Blue Book closed in 1969.[1][2]

The UFO Experience

The mother-ship model used in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), named after Hynek's classification.
The mother-ship model used in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), named after Hynek's classification. Photo: Sanjay Acharya · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

In The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry (1972), Hynek classified reports by distance:[2][4]

  • Distant sightings. Nocturnal lights, daylight discs and radar-visual cases.
  • Close encounters of the first kind. UFOs seen close enough to make out detail.
  • Close encounters of the second kind. Physical effects, such as scorched trees, frightened animals or stalled car engines.
  • Close encounters of the third kind. Occupants seen in or near a UFO.

For Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), he was paid $1,000 for the title, $1,000 for stories from the book and $1,500 for three days' technical advice. He made a brief cameo near the end, bearded and holding a pipe.[1][2] Franch writes that the book damaged his standing at Northwestern. In 1982 the dean of arts and sciences wrote that the faculty were "not, have not been, and will not be proud of Hynek's UFO affairs".[4] See Hynek's The UFO Experience.

CUFOS and later work

Hynek founded the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston in 1973. Northwestern refused to host it or let him use the university's address.[1][4] Its archives include files of NICAP.[1] In 1984 he moved the centre to Scottsdale, Arizona, lured by a wealthy Englishman whose promises came to little.[4] His activities included:

  • Books. The Edge of Reality (1975, with Vallée), The Hynek UFO Report (1977) and Night Siege (1987, with Philip Imbrogno and Bob Pratt), on the Hudson Valley sightings.[1]
  • Media. He wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker and Playboy and appeared on television and the lecture circuit. He boasted that each lecture paid more than a month's university salary.[4]
  • Abductions. In 1973 he said the two Pascagoula shipyard workers had had "a very real experience".[4] See Pascagoula abduction.
  • The United Nations. In November 1978 he made a statement to the General Assembly's Special Political Committee on behalf of himself, Vallée and the French engineer Claude Poher. They sought a central UN authority on UFOs.[1] See Eric Gairy.

His theories

At the 1973 MUFON symposium in Akron, Ohio, in a talk called "The Embarrassment of the Riches", Hynek publicly doubted the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Many thousands of reports a year from remote regions of space, he asked, "to scare us by stopping cars, and disturbing animals"?[1] Privately he had gone further. In 1967 he told Vallée that UFOs might be "observational devices that are materialized into our world by the denizens of another" plane.[1][4] At the 1977 International UFO Congress he said there was "sufficient evidence to defend both" extraterrestrial and extradimensional hypotheses. He also proposed an "M&M" technology "encompassing the mental and material realms".[1] The ufologist Jerome Clark said Hynek told him he believed nature spirits, "elementals", lay behind UFOs. Franch links this to Steiner's influence.[4]

Criticism

The Jaroslaw "hamburger" photograph of January 1967, which Hynek initially endorsed. The teenagers later confessed to a hoax.
The Jaroslaw "hamburger" photograph of January 1967, which Hynek initially endorsed. The teenagers later confessed to a hoax. Photo: Grant Jaroslaw · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
  • Philip Klass. Klass, his most prolific critic, faulted him for dismissing identified cases as worthless. Klass argued they show how sincere witnesses embellish reports. He also noted that CUFOS had not produced the hard evidence Hynek promised in a 1967 Playboy article.[1]
  • Robert Sheaffer. A former student, Sheaffer accused Hynek of gullibility and of forgetting a stereo UFO photograph he had taken himself when he later said he had never seen one.[1]
  • Andrew Fraknoi. In 1981 the astronomer called Hynek one of "the loudest and [most] exploitative exponents of pseudo-science".[1]
  • The Jaroslaw photos. In 1967 Hynek gave hedged endorsements to Polaroid photos of a "hamburger"-shaped object taken by two Michigan teenagers. Nine years later they confessed to a hoax.[1]
  • From the other side. The physicist James McDonald castigated him in 1970 for lapses. McDonald predicted that Donald Keyhoe would be judged the more honest ufologist.[1] Vallée wrote in 1968 that his colleagues' attitude was changing "to the point of contempt".[1][4]

Franch, writing in the Skeptical Inquirer in 2013, called Hynek's sceptical period "a façade for public consumption". He argued that Hynek's public turn may partly have been revenge on the Air Force for cancelling Star Gazer. He also noted that only about a dozen of Hynek's more than 100 astronomical publications came after 1966.[4]

Death and legacy

Hynek died of a malignant brain tumour at Memorial Hospital in Scottsdale on 27 April 1986, aged 75, as Halley's Comet returned.[1][4] He and his second wife, Miriam Curtis Hynek, had five children. His son Joel became an Oscar-winning visual-effects supervisor.[1] Joel recalled that the main lesson from his father was "how important it was to keep an open mind".[2] His papers are held at Northwestern University; the archive catalogue could not be read for this revision.[4][5] In 2019 the History Channel aired Project Blue Book, a highly fictionalised drama based on his work.[1] History.com concluded that, more than anyone, he made trying to solve the UFO riddle a legitimate scientific pursuit.[2] See Hynek autopsy rumor (1994).

On the UAP Timeline

Connected articles

References

  1. J. Allen Hynek — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
  2. Greg Daugherty, "J. Allen Hynek and Project Blue Book", History.com (2018) · history.com · archived copy
  3. Statement of J. Allen Hynek, House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Symposium on UFOs (1968) · files.ncas.org · archived copy
  4. John Franch, "The Secret Life of J. Allen Hynek", Skeptical Inquirer (2013) · skepticalinquirer.org · archived copy
  5. J. Allen Hynek Papers, Northwestern University Library · findingaids.library.northwestern.edu · archived copy
  6. Unidentified Flying Objects: hearing by the House Committee on Armed Services, 5 April 1966 (PDF) · govinfo.gov

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “J. Allen Hynek”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Categories: Person | Project blue book | Unidentified anomalous phenomena | Unidentified flying object | Us air force

This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.

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