The Chicago-born scientist, known to those who study UFOs, was described in the FBI files as a man of “good character” and “person of good habits”.
When the alleged UFO sightings were becoming commonplace, two people in an Air Force control tower reported seeing an object resembling “a lighted automobile”, which the Air Force later said was determined to be an aircraft.
Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Chicago-born astronomer and professor at Northwestern University who studied UFO reports to the Air Force, was not convinced.
Hynek wrote:
Therefore, the witnesses were solid, the competent radar operator and the object unidentifiable as any other phenomenon, and therefore the object had to be an aircraft.
He studied at the University of Chicago, taught at Northwestern and Ohio State University and founded the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in the Chicago area. He approached the subject of UFOs with healthy skepticism, according to Mark Rodeghier, the center’s scientific director.
Rodeghier said:
He absolutely went into the subject as highly skeptical of the phenomenon, like almost every scientist at that time. He was a data scientist. Over time, he said: “Wait a minute, not only can I not explain this, these things cannot be explained”.
Paul Hynek, one of Hynek’s five children, says his father “wanted to go to the limits of conventional science and see what’s going on there, and take things a step further”, but “would give an unbiased view.”
From 1947 to 1969, more than 12,000 UFO sightings were reported and 701 were classified as ‘unidentified’, according to FBI records obtained by Chicago Sun-Times, many of which are now part of the ‘databaseThe FBI Files‘From the newspaper.
Hynek died in 1986, aged 76. The FBI generally agrees, upon request, to release records kept on people who have died.
Hynek’s FBI files show that he was examined by the FBI, who reported receiving references praising him as a “good character” and a “person with good habits”.
Blue Book Project, the Air Force initiative that investigated UFOs, ended in 1969, concluding that, whatever they were, alleged UFOs posed no threat to national security.
Hynek “strongly resisted accepting the idea that a genuine UFO phenomenon could exist”, according to his text “Twenty-One Years of UFO Reports.“. He wrote that he studied UFO reports based on ‘strangeness’ and ‘probability’, analyzing which reports seemed inexplicable and the objectivity of the people who reported a UFO sighting.
Although J. Allen Hynek’s name was associated with UFOs in the public eye, he studied reports of unidentified flying objects with a sense of skepticism, according to his son Paul Hynek.
The FBI seemed to be considering the possibility of UFOs existing. Hynek’s article “The UFO Mystery” was published in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin in February 1975.
Hynek wrote:
There are many misconceptions about the UFO phenomenon that are generally held by those who have never examined the data. The first of them is, of course, that UFO reports are mostly made by crazy people. The facts are completely different.
Melville Ulmer, professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern, who worked with him for about six years, says Hynek was convinced that there was a UFO phenomenon, although he was not necessarily connected to extraterrestrial life.
J. Allen Hynek in 1966, taking note of a UFO sighting reported in Michigan. Prior to coming to Northwestern University, where he chaired the astronomy department, his previous positions included being an associate director at Harvard University’s Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Sun-Times Archive
Ulme said:
He was not committed to the conclusion of what it was, but he had the conclusion that so many people cannot have this experience without an explanation.
