Dubbed “The Galileo of Ufology “by Newsweek magazine (November 1977), Dr J. Allen Hynek was considered by his colleagues to be the preeminent authority of UFO phenomena. Hynek became involve with UFOs as scientific consultant to the US Air force from 1948 to 1968.
He was the first speaker to present testimony at the 1968 hearing on UFOs held by the House Committee on Science and Astronautics and later appeared before the United Nations to support the proposed establishment of an agency to conduct and coordinate research into UFOs and related phenomena.
In the early 1970s, Hynek coined the phrase “Close encounters of the third kind,” and acted as technical advisor to director Steven Spielberg on the movie of the same name.
Hynek founded CUFOS (The centre for UFO studies) in 1973 and served as its director until his death in 1986.
For more than twenty year DR Hynek served as astronomical consultant to the US Air force projects sign and blue book, which processed and studied UFO sightings reported to Air force bases. He came to North-western University in 1960 from position as associate director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was in charge pf the US Optical satellite tracking program. He was responsible for the precise tracking of man’s first artificial satellite, as well as for some 270 volunteer “Moonwatch” stations in various countries.
A Native of Chicago, Hynek has had many illustrious posts in his scientific career. After receiving his doctorate in astronomy from the university of Chicago, he was in turn : Professor of astronomy and director of the McMillin Observatory at Ohio State University; supervisor of technical reports at the Applied Physic Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins university during World War 2; assistant dean of the graduate School of Ohio State and professor of astronomy after the war; and lecturer in astronomy at Harvard during the four years he was associate director of the Smithsonian’s observatory in Cambridge; after which he joined North-western University as chairman of the department of astronomy and director of the Dearborn Observatory, posts he held for fifteen years. During his tenure he was instrumental in the founding of the Lindheimer Astronomical Research Centre and served as its first director.
Dr Hynek has published numerous technical papers in astrophysics and is the author of several textbooks. He is also the author of “The UFO experience. “ A scientific enquiry (1972) “, the hynek report of UFOs (1977) “and co-author (with Jacques Vallee) of the “edge of reality (1975)
POSITION STATEMENT:
In an interview for fate magazine (June 1976 issue), Hynek stated his position of the UFO phenomenon as follows:
The conclusion I’ve come to after all these years is that first of all, the subject is much more complex than any of us imagined. It has paranormal aspects but certainly it has very real physical aspects, too.
The attitude we’re taking in the centre for UFO Studies is that since were going to have scientists involved, we will push the physical approach as hard and far as we can – instrumentation, Physical evidence, photographs, radar records. If we are finally forced by the evidence itself to go into the paranormal, then we will.
And in another interview, he expressed these views (from lumieres dan la Nuit, issue No. 168 of October 1977):
{The extra-terrestrial} Theory runs up against a very big difficulty, namely that we are seeing too many UFOs. The earth is only a spot of dust in the Universe. Why should it be honoured with so many visits?
Interview: Then what is your hypothesis?
Hynek: I am more inclined to think in term of something Metaterrestrial , a sort of parallel reality.
Interviewer: And what then is your personal conviction?
Hynek: I have the impression that the UFOs are announcing a change that is coming soon in our scientific paradigms. I am very much afraid that UFO is related to certain psychic phenomena. And if I say “I am very much afraid”, this is because at our Centre at Evanston we are trying to study this problem from the angle of the physical sciences.
… But it would be absurd to follow up only one path to the exclusion of all other.
This theory was repeated again, when Hynek was interviewed by Newsweek: UFOs, he says, may be a psychic phenomenon and the “aliens” may not come from outer space but from a “parallel reality” (November 21, 1977).
In yet another interview (for the 3, April 1978 issue of today’s student), Hynek added that:
Certainly the phenomenon has psychic aspects. I don’t talk about them very much because to a general audience the words “psychic” and “occult” have bad overtones. They say, “Aw, it’s all crazy”. But the fact is that there are psychic things; for instance, UFOs seem to materialize and dematerialize. There are people who’ve claimed to have developed psychic ability. There have been reported cases of hearing in close encounters and there have been reported cases of precognition, where people had foreknowledge or forewarning that they were going to see something.
There has been a change of outlooks, a change of philosophy of person’s lives. Now, you see, those are rather tricky things to talk about openly, but it’s there.
Many people, like Jacques Vallee and I, to some extent, feel that it might be a conditioning process.