J. Allen Hynek

J. Allen Hynek was an American astronomer who earned his PhD at the University of Chicago and taught at Ohio State and later Northwestern University, where he chaired the astronomy department.

From 1947 to 1969 he was the Air Force's scientific consultant on UFO reports, through Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book. At first he mostly supplied conventional explanations. Over time he became critical of Blue Book's emphasis on explaining reports away and argued that a small number of well-documented cases deserved serious scientific study. He later dismissed the project as 'The Society for the Explanation of the Uninvestigated'.

In his 1972 book 'The UFO Experience' he set out the close-encounter categories now widely used, and in 1973 he founded the Center for UFO Studies. He advised on and briefly appeared in Steven Spielberg's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. Skeptics criticized his later views; supporters see him as a pioneer of careful UFO research.