J. Allen Hynek was a professor of Astronomy at Northwestern University
in Evanston, IL. He was also the Founder of the Center for UFO Studies
and first coined the phrase "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" as a
way to catagorize direct contact with aliens.
Dr. Allen's son Joel Hynek directed the design of the camouflage for the creature in the movie Predator (1987).
He was the astronomy consultant to the US Air Force's Project Sign, which was established in 1948 to investigate sightings of UFOs.
He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago. He did research for his doctoral degree at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin. He then was hired as an instructor at Ohio State University, and became a professor.
His father was a cigar-maker, and his mother taught grammar school.
He was a director of the Operation Moonwatch satellite tracking program, secretary of the American Astronomical Society, and was influential in the Project Star Gazer balloon program.
Close encounters of the third kind. [on physical contact with an
alien being or an extraterrestrial craft, in his book _The UFO
Experience_, Regnery, 1972]
This intellectual Pearl Harbor, a real gutsy sock to the stomach. [On
the success of the Soviet orbiter Sputnik, the Earth's first artificial
satellite]