Professor Josef Allen Hynek

 

Josef Allen Hynek (May 1, 1910 – April 27, 1986) was an American astronomer, professor, and ufologist. He is perhaps best remembered for his UFO research. Hynek acted as scientific advisor to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force under three projects: Project Sign (1947–1949), Project Grudge (1949–1951) and Project Blue Book (1952–1969).

In later years, he conducted his own independent UFO research, developing the "Close Encounter" classification system. He was among the first people to conduct scientific analysis of reports and especially of trace evidence purportedly left by UFOs

During World War II, Hynek was a civilian scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where he helped to develop the United States Navy's radio proximity fuse.

After the war, Hynek returned to the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ohio State, rising to full professor in 1950. In 1953, Hynek submitted a report on the fluctuations in the brightness and color of starlight and daylight, with an emphasis on daytime observations.

In 1956, he left to join Professor Fred Whipple, the Harvard astronomer, at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which had combined with the Harvard Observatory at Harvard. Hynek had the assignment of directing the tracking of an American space satellite, a project for the International Geophysical Year in 1956 and thereafter. In addition to over 200 teams of amateur scientists around the world that were part of Operation Moonwatch, there were also 12 photographic Baker-Nunn stations. A special camera was devised for the task and a prototype was built and tested and then stripped apart again when, on Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched its first satellite, Sputnik 1.

After completing his work on the satellite program, Hynek went back to teaching, taking the position of professor and chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University in 1960.

Hynek was the founder and first head of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). Founded in 1973 in Evanston, Illinois (but now based in Chicago), CUFOS advocates for scientific analysis of UFO cases. CUFOS's extensive archives include valuable files from civilian research groups such as NICAP, one of the most popular UFO research groups of the 1950s and 1960s.

In November 1978, Hynek presented a statement on UFOs before the United Nations General Assembly's Special Political Committee on behalf of himself, Jacques Vallée, and Claude Poher. The speech was prepared and approved by the three authors. Their objective was to initiate a centralized, United Nations authority on UFOs.

In his first book, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, Hynek published the "Close Encounter" scale that he had developed to better catalog UFO reports. Hynek was later a consultant to Columbia Pictures and Steven Spielberg for the popular 1977 UFO movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, named after a level of Hynek's scale. He made a cameo appearance in the film. At the end of the film, after the aliens disembark from the "mother ship", he can be seen, bearded and with pipe in mouth, stepping forward to view the spectacle.

Hynek's second book, The Hynek UFO Report (1977) Hynek distilled, as best anyone could, the 12,000 sightings and 140,000 pages of Project Blue Book evidence into a coherent explanation and was, for me, a book that I read straight through.  Hynek had been, for many years, the US Air Force-sponsored UFO-basher but by the late 1960s had completely changed his mind. 

In fact there are debunkers who have written about Hynek having become an astronomer to seek out and explain things science had ignore or been unable to explain and so his USAF work was a "gift". Just how this negates his work I have no idea since the work of a true scientist is to do just that and not sit back in a comfortable chair preaching dogma. For me The UFO Experience and Hynek UFO Report were must reading and I encouraged anyone I could to read them.

There had been any number of attempts by the flying saucer/UFO fraternity to classify reports and supposedly give Ufology a scientific approach or appearance and most failed because of various factors. Hynek thought about this and used his scientific experience to create the Close Encounters categories and although people have added up to 10(!!) on to this for the CE3K category I only use one and that is all that is really needed for many reasons.

 The fact that Hynek was willing to consider entity reports was a breakthrough even if he was unsure what it all meant in the end. I was somewhat shocked with the first book and inclusion of entity reports. I had, like most others, only read of Hynek as the arch debunker and although we knew he had changed this stance I had thought the CE3K cases would be avoided. Personally, for me, this was a slap back at all of those in Ufology who had made the jokes and undermined my work on these reports. Hynek tackled the reports head on and that put him on the pedestal.

Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings is considered by many to be an historical document about UFO sightings -- a series of flashing lights that formed a "V" as big as a football field, moving slowly and silently- in1983. The locus was a valley a few miles north of New York City. Hundreds of observers were involved and all were, obviously, startle, shocked and confused to see a UFO . This updated text explores all the evidence and over 7000 sightings including those recorded up to 1995. 

Hynek talked to and believed that Hickson and Parker experienced something at Pascagoula. He also had his own take on the Travis Walton case. His books, and their inclusion of CE3K reports giving them a degree of respectability and his research makes Hynek one of those deserving of credit.

I think a comment from someone I knew sums up what I always thought: "Hynek...he knew so much and yet wrote so few books!"

On April 27, 1986, Hynek died of a malignant brain tumor, at Memorial Hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was 75 years old, and was survived by his wife Mimi, children Scott, Roxane, Joel, Paul, and Ross, and his grandchildren.

There is a full Wikipedia entry on Dr. Hynek from which much of the above is taken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek