J. Allen Hynek & The Center for UFO Studies
Thursday February 28, 2008 8:21 AM
J. Allen Hynek is perhaps most well known for his UFO-encounter classification system. He developed a three-tiered system: in a close encounter of the first kind, the witness sees a UFO but does not interact with it; in a close encounter of the second kind, the witness or her environment is in some way affected by the UFO (marks on the ground, radiation burns, etc.); and in a close encounter of the third kind, the witness sees or interacts with an alien life form. This system inspired the title of Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Hynek himself served as a consultant for the film.
However, Hynek was also a member of Project Blue Book, a United States Air Force project founded to catalogue and investigate UFO sightings. Hynek, an astronomy professor, had been hired by the Air Force to debunk such UFO sightings, but he found them so numerous and plausible that he became convinced of their existence. After Project Blue Book folded in 1969, he founded the Center for UFO Studies in 1973.
Presently, the Center for UFO Studies publishes books and journals about UFOs, most notably the International UFO Reporter. They maintain a library of UFO-related materials, a library that consists partly of materials inherited from the National Investigative Committee on Aerial Phenomenon when it disbanded in 1978. They investigate current and past UFO sightings and associated phenomenon, including the Roswell UFO crash of 1947. Notably, the Center for UFO Studies investigated Jimmy Carter's 1969 UFO sighting, which turned out to be not a UFO at all, but rather the planet Venus.
Hynek remained the director of the Center for UFO Studies until his death in 1985. In the years since he created his classification system, ufologists have added two more types of close encounters: close encounters of the fourth kind, in which the witness is abducted by aliens; and close encounters of the fifth kind, in which the witness manages to communicate with aliens.
