Scientists.
Astronomers, physicists, microbiologists, intelligence-cleared analysts. The historic record and the mysterious-deaths cluster, in one place.
Historic.
Alan Shepard
American naval aviator and astronaut. The first American in space — a 15-minute suborbital flight on May 5, 1961. Grounded by inner ear disease for nearly a decade; returned to command Apollo 14 and hit two golf balls on the Moon.
Avi Loeb
Israeli-American theoretical physicist. Harvard astronomy department chair 2011-2020. Argued that interstellar object Oumuamua may have been an artificial artifact. Founded the Galileo Project.
Buzz Aldrin
American engineer and astronaut. Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 11. Fighter ace in Korea. Received a D.Sc. in orbital mechanics from MIT. The second human to walk on the Moon.
Carl Sagan
American astronomer, cosmologist, and author. Cornell professor, Cosmos creator, and Voyager golden record designer. Skeptical of UFO claims but serious about the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Christopher Mellon
Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Provided the Nimitz UAP videos to the Washington Post in 2017. Most credentialed advocate for UAP congressional oversight.
Donald H. Menzel
American astrophysicist at Harvard. Public skeptic of the UFO phenomenon. Authored several debunking texts.
Edgar Mitchell
American naval officer and astronaut. Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 14. The sixth human to walk on the Moon. Founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. The most prominent astronaut advocate for the reality of UAP secrecy.
Eric W. Davis
American astrophysicist. Co-author with Admiral Thomas R. Wilson of the leaked Wilson-Davis memo describing alleged UAP-related programs.
Eugene Cernan
American naval aviator and astronaut. Commander of Apollo 17. The last human to walk on the Moon, December 14, 1972. His final steps on the surface were deliberate. He knew what they were.
Freeman Dyson
British-American theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Proposed the Dyson sphere. Worked on Project Orion — a nuclear-pulse spaceship. Iconoclast until death at 96.
Gordon Cooper
American test pilot and astronaut. Mercury 9. Gemini 5. The last American to fly solo in space. One of the most credible military witnesses to UFO activity, with accounts spanning from a 1951 sighting over Germany to filmed encounters at Edwards AFB in 1957.
Hal Puthoff
American physicist. Co-founder of To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science. Technical analyst during AATIP era.
Hermann Oberth
Romanian-German physicist and founding father of rocketry. His 1923 doctoral thesis — rejected by Heidelberg — became the textbook that launched a generation of rocket engineers, including Wernher von Braun.
J. Allen Hynek
American astronomer, professor, and ufologist. Scientific advisor to Project Sign, Project Grudge, and Project Blue Book. Founded the Center for UFO Studies in 1973.
Jacques Vallee
French-American computer scientist, venture capitalist, and astronomer. Long-time UAP cataloguer, collaborator with J. Allen Hynek.
James E. McDonald
American atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona. Among the most credentialed scientific critics of the Condon Report.
John E. Mack
Harvard psychiatry professor and Pulitzer Prize winner. Conducted clinical interviews with alien abductees and concluded their experiences were genuine — a position that nearly cost him his Harvard tenure.
John Glenn
American Marine Corps aviator and astronaut. The first American to orbit Earth, February 20, 1962. US Senator from Ohio for 24 years. In 1998, at 77, he became the oldest person ever to fly in space.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Russian rocket scientist and pioneer of cosmonautics. Deaf from childhood. Derived the rocket equation in 1897 while living in a log house with no running water. The mathematical father of the Space Age.
Luis Elizondo
Former US Army Counterintelligence Special Agent. Director of AATIP 2010-2017. Resigned in protest and became the most prominent UAP whistleblower within the US intelligence community.
Neil Armstrong
American test pilot and astronaut. Commander of Apollo 11. The first human to walk on the Moon, July 20, 1969. He spent the rest of his life declining to be famous.
Nick Pope
British journalist and former MOD official. Ran the UK government's UFO desk 1991-1994. Investigated the Cosford incident and other major British cases.
Qian Xuesen
Chinese aerospace engineer. Co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Deported from the US in 1955 after McCarthy-era accusations; returned to China and built its missile and space program from scratch.
Robert H. Goddard
American engineer and physicist. Launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926. Developed gyroscopic stabilization, regenerative cooling, and staged combustion — the three pillars of all subsequent rocketry.
Sergei Korolev
Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer. The anonymous Chief Designer behind Sputnik, Vostok, and the early Soyuz program. His identity was classified for fear of assassination.
Stanton Friedman
Canadian nuclear physicist and UFO researcher. The original civilian investigator of the Roswell crash. Led the campaign to declassify government UFO files for four decades.
Story Musgrave
American physician, mathematician, and astronaut. Six Space Shuttle flights. The only astronaut to fly on all five orbiters. Holds advanced degrees in mathematics, chemistry, medicine, physiology, and literature. Has spoken openly about UAPs observed during missions.
Valentina Tereshkova
Soviet cosmonaut. The first woman in space. She orbited Earth 48 times aboard Vostok 6 in June 1963 — more solo orbital time than all American astronauts combined at that point.
Vikram Sarabhai
Indian physicist and father of the Indian space program. Founded ISRO's predecessor INCOSPAR in 1962. Convinced NASA to provide India with a sounding rocket range at Thumba — a fishing village that became a space center.
Wernher von Braun
German-American aerospace engineer. Chief architect of the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo 11 to the Moon. Formerly of the Nazi V-2 weapons program.
Yuri Gagarin
Soviet cosmonaut. On April 12, 1961, aboard Vostok 1, he became the first human being in space. The flight lasted 108 minutes. He ejected at 7 kilometers altitude and parachuted to Earth. He never flew in space again.
Dead scientists.
Documented mysterious deaths and disappearances. Major-press sourcing only. Right-of-reply on request to [email protected].
Benito Que
Cell biologist at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Found unresponsive outside the laboratory; cause of death disputed.
Don C. Wiley
Harvard biochemist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Found drowned in the Mississippi River. Death ultimately ruled accidental but widely covered as part of a cluster of microbiologist deaths in late 2001.
Frank Olson
American bacteriologist working on the CIA MK-ULTRA program. Fell from a 13th-floor window of the Hotel Statler in New York. The CIA later acknowledged he had been covertly dosed with LSD.
Set Van Nguyen
Vietnamese-Australian microbiologist at the CSIRO Animal Health Laboratory. Found asphyxiated in a freezer storage room.
Vladimir Pasechnik
Soviet-British microbiologist who defected from the Soviet Biopreparat program in 1989. Died of a stroke at age 64.