J.Allen Hynek, an astrophysicist and consultant to
an Air force project to assess reports of unidentified Flying objects,
died of a malignant brain tumor Sunday at Memorial Hospital in Scottsdale,
Ariz. He was 75 years old.
Dr. Hynek, who moved to Scottsdale from Evanston,
Ill., a year ago, was for 18 years professor and chairman of the Department
of Astronomy at Northwestern University and director of its Dearborn Observatory,
until he retired in 1978. He was involved in the Air Force U.F.O. research
effort from 1948 to 1969.
Often his task for the Air force was to examine at
first hand more substantial reports of flying saucers and the like. In
1966, after a rash of sightings in Michigan, he went to the area to take
charge of the investigation. After interviewing scores of people, he ascribed
certain sightings to luminous marsh gas rather that something from space.
Nevertheless, he said, "Scientists in the year 2066 may think of us
very naive in our denials".
He long asserted that U.F.O.'s should be taken seriously
and he eventually became displeased with the Air force approach. He said
that its methods were slipshod and that it was not conducting a scientific
study. The Air Force, in turn, concluded that there was no evidence of
extraterrestrial craft and the U.F.O. project was abandoned.
He Avoids 'U.F.O. Nut' Label
In an interview in 1974, Dr. Hynek said that he had
remained with the program as long as he did to retain access to Air force
data and to avoid being marked a "U.F.O. nut."
Dr. Hynek founded the center for U.F.O. Studies in
Evanston in 1973 and took it with him when he moved to Scottsdale.
He is credited with coining the phrase "close encounters
of the third kind" to describe humans meeting creatures from space.
He used the phrase in his 1972 book "The U.F.O. Experience" and
it became the title of the 1977 Steven Spielberg film, on which he served
as technical adviser.
When a reporter once suggested that Dr. Hynek he might
be remembered not as an astronomer but as the man who made U.F.O.'s respectable,
he replied: "I wouldn't mind. If I can succeed in making the study of
U.F.O.'s scientifically respectable and do something constructive in it,
then I think that would be a real contribution".
He resigned from the center he founded a few months
ago for ill health, according to the director, Tina Choate.
He Worked on Proximity Fuse
In World War II, Dr. Hynek was a civilian scientist
at the Johns Hopkins Applied Science Laboratory, where he helped to develop
the navy's radio proximity fuse.
Josef Allen Hynek was born in Chicago, Ill.,
to Czechoslovak parents. He graduated from the University of Chicago in
1931 and earned a Ph.D. degree there in 1935.
He joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy
at Ohio State in 1936.
After the war he returned there, rising to full professor
in 1950.
In 1956 he left to join Prof. Fred Whipple, The Harvard
astronomer, at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which had combined
with the Harvard Observatory at harvard. Dr. Hynek had the assignment of
directing the tracking of an American space satellite, a project for the
International Geophysical Year in 1956 and thereafter.
In addition to 247 optical stations around the world,
there were to be 12 photographic stations. A special camera was devised
for the task and a prototype was build and tested and then stripped apart
again when, on Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched its first satellite,
Sputnik.
Assumed the U.S Would Be First
"We had always assumed that the United States would
have the first satellite." Dr. Hynek said ruefully at the time. "If I've
ever had a traumatic experience, that was it."
Observations of the Soviet satellite were received,
and with twice-daily news conferences, Dr. Hynek and dr. Whipple began
to reassure the public after what Dr. Hynek called "this intellectual Pearl
Harbor, a real gutsy sock to the stomach."
Once things in satellite tracking settled down to
a routine, Dr. Hynek went back to teaching, taking the chairmanship at
Northwestern in 1960.
He is survived by his wife, the former Miriam Curtis;
four sons and a daughter, Scott Josef, of Walthan, Mass.; Joel Curtis,
of Leonia, N.J., Paul Curtis, of Scottsdale, Ross Allen, of Lake Forest,
Ill.; Roxane, of Hanover, Mass; and five grandchildren.
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