J. Allen Hynek

<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Dr. J. (Josef) Allen Hynek was an astronomer and official consultant to the U.S. Air Force on UFOs who later would continue his investigations as an independent researcher.

Hynek, who was originally sceptical and would later become an advocate for serious scientific UFO research, made two contributions to the mainstream lexicon.

In 1966, while investigating a UFO flap in Gerald Ford's congressional district in Michigan, Hynek made a cautious, tentative suggestion that at least one of the sightings might have been caused by "swamp gas". The press, comics, and cartoonists ran with the phrase, and treated it as a condescending dismissal of all UFO sightings by the Air Force.

In 1972, Hynek introduced a classification system for UFO reports. The system essentially divides sightings by the specificity of the percipient's experience. The classes from Nocturnal Lights (which are the ones that are most likely to be misperceptions) to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (where an entity is seen in association with a UFO). In 1977, Steven Spielberg would release a movie called Close Encounters of the Third Kind (movie), inspired by UFO reports. Hynek has a very brief cameo.