Dr. James E. McDonald (May 7, 1920 – June 13, 1971) was an American physicist. He is probably best known for his research regarding UFOs. McDonald was senior physicist at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics and professor in the Department of Meteorology, University of Arizona, Tucson. May 7 is the 127th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (128th in leap years). ... 1920 (MCMXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January January 7 - Forces of Russian White admiral Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk. ... June 13 is the 164th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (165th in leap years), with 201 days remaining. ... 1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1971 calendar). ... A physicist is a scientist trained in physics. ... UFO redirects here. ... Satellite image of Hurricane Hugo with a polar low visible at the top of the image. ... The references in this article would be clearer with a different style of citation, footnoting or external linking. ... A city street near downtown Tucson, Arizona. ...

Throughout the mid and late 1960's he campaigned vigorously in support of expanding UFO studies, arguing that UFOs represented an intriguing, pressing and unsolved mystery which had not been adequately studied by science. McDonald was one of the more prominent figures of his time who agued in favor of the so-called extraterrestrial hypothesis (or ETH) as a viable explanation for UFOs. The Extraterrestrial hypothesis (sometimes shortened to ETH) is the hypothesis that UFO reports are best explained as creatures from other planets, occupying physical extraterrestrial spacecraft visiting Earth. ...

A dedicated and tireless UFO researcher and scholar, he personally interviewed over 500 UFO witnesses and uncovered many important government UFO documents. He testified before Congress during the UFO hearings of 1968. [1] Some Ufologists consider his presentation there the single best summary of the UFO evidence ever given. Another famous McDonald summary of the UFO evidence, called "Science in Default," was a critique of the 1969 Condon Report UFO study prepared for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). It was published posthumously in 1972 in "UFO's, A Scientific Debate," edited by Carl Sagan and Thornton Page. Ufology is the study of Unidentified flying object (UFO) reports, sightings and other related phenomena. ... see Condon Committee ... The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an organization that promotes cooperation between scientists, defends scientific freedom, encourages scientific responsibility and supports scientific education for the betterment of all humanity. ... Dr. Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrobiologist, and highly successful science popularizer. ...

Val Germann writes that "McDonald was a scourge of the complacent ufologists of his day. He blasted the Air Force, Hynek, Menzel, Condon and anyone else doing a second-rate job in the UFO arena. He was a first-rate intellect and a world-famous atmospheric scientist, this last very important since UFOs are mainly reported in the atmosphere, not in outer space. This put the astronomers (Hynek & Menzel) on the spot when they tried to challenge McDonald. He was in his field, they were not. This would often cause Menzel acute embarrassment."[2] The United States Air Force (USAF) is the aerospace branch of the United States armed forces. ... Josef Allen Hynek (born 1st May, 1910 in Chicago - died 27th April, 1986 in Scottsdale), was a U.S. astronomer and ufologist; he served as scientific advisor to Project Blue Book 1952-1969. ... Donald Howard Menzel (April 11, 1901 – December 14, 1976) was an American astronomer. ... Edward Uhler Condon (March 2, 1902 – March 26, 1974) was a distinguished nuclear physicist, a pioneer in quantum mechanics, a participant in the development of radar and nuclear weapons in World War II, research director of Corning Glass, director of the National Bureau of Standards, and president of the American... An astronomer or astrophysicist is a scientist whose area of research is astronomy or astrophysics. ...

Biography

McDonald was born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota. He served as a cryptographer in the United States Navy during World War 2, and afterwards, married Betsy Hunt; they would have six children. Map Political Statistics Founded 1679 Incorporated 1800s County St. ... The German Lorenz cipher machine Cryptography or cryptology is a field of mathematics and computer science concerned with information security and related issues, particularly encryption and authentication. ... The United States Navy (USN) is the branch of the United States armed forces responsible for conducting naval operations around the globe. ... Combatants Allies: Poland, British Commonwealth, France/Free France, Soviet Union, United States, China, and others Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan, and others Casualties Military dead: 17 million Civilian dead: 33 million Total dead: 50 million Military dead: 8 million Civilian dead: 4 million Total dead: 12 million World War II...

McDonald studied at the University of Omaha, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and earned his Ph.D. at Iowa State University. He taught at the University of Chicago for a year, then in 1953, he was invited to help establish a meteorology and atmospherics program at the University of Arizona as a professor of meteorology. McDonald eventually became the head of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, but resigned as its administrator after about a year--he preferred to teach and research rather than oversee the entire department. The University of Nebraska at Omaha, founded 1908 as the University of Omaha, is the Omaha, Nebraska, campus of the University of Nebraska system, and is the second-largest institution of higher education in Nebraska (after the University of Nebraska-Lincoln). ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT is one of the worlds leading research institutions in science and technology. ... Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. ... Iowa State University (ISU) is a public land-grant university and space-grant university located in Ames, Iowa. ... The University of Chicago is a private university principally located in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1890 and opened in 1892. ... The references in this article would be clearer with a different style of citation, footnoting or external linking. ... Satellite image of Hurricane Hugo with a polar low visible at the top of the image. ...

His specialty was cloud formation and physics, but his natural curiosity led him to read widely in many other scientific fields. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Meteorological Society. Cumulus of fair weather A cloud is a visible mass of condensed droplets or ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body. ... President Harding and the National Academy of Sciences at the White House, Washington, DC, April 1921 The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine. ... The American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. ...

In 1954, while driving through the Arizona deserts with two meteorologists, McDonald spotted an unidentified flying object none of the men could identify with established science. This sighting would spur McDonald’s interest in UFOs. By the late 1950’s he was quietly investigating UFO reports in Arizona, and he had also joined civilian UFO research group NICAP. He was known as a sensitive, friendly interviewer who took pains to avoid asking leading or suggestive questions. Given his training in atmospheric physics, McDonald was able to examine UFO reports in greater detail than most other scientists, and was able to offer explanations for some previously unexplained reports. On the other hand, McDonald uncovered a small minority of well-documented reports which he judged deeply puzzling even after stringent analysis. Meteorology is the scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and forecasting. ... UFO redirects here. ... see National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena ...

By the mid-1960s, McDonald began speaking about UFOs more openly. Following a widely-publicized series of mass UFO reports from Michigan in 1966, he was one of several scientists who urged various authorities to undertake a formal study of UFOs. This pressure eventually culminated in the Condon Committee, directed by esteemed physicist Edward Condon. The Condon Committee was the informal name of the University of Colorado UFO Project, a study of unidentified flying objects, undertaken at the University of Colorado and directed by physicist Edward Condon from 1966 to 1968. ... Edward Uhler Condon (March 2, 1902 – March 26, 1974) was a distinguished nuclear physicist, a pioneer in quantum mechanics, a participant in the development of radar and nuclear weapons in World War II, research director of Corning Glass, director of the National Bureau of Standards, and president of the American...

Though McDonald shared the initial general enthusiasm towards the Committee, he eventually became one of its sharpest critics. While the Condon Committee was in progress, the Office of Naval Research granted McDonald a small budget in order to conduct his own UFO research, ostensibly to study the idea that some UFOs were misidentified clouds. He was able to peruse the files of Project Blue Book at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and eventually concluded that the Air Force was mishandling UFO evidence. Following the Robertson Panel's recommendations, the Air Force was following a debunking directive, and only discussing UFO cases which were considered solved by a mundane explanation, while unexplained accounts were classified secret. ONR Logo The Office of Naval Research (ONR), headquartered in Arlington, Virginia (Ballston), is an office of the U.S. Navy that carries out scientific research to support the Navy and national security. ... Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. ... Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is a U.S. Air Force base in Greene and Montgomery counties, adjacent to Fairborn and Dayton, Ohio. ... The Robertson Panel was a committee commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1952 in responses to widespread Unidentified Flying Object reports, especially in the Washington DC area. ... A debunker is a skeptic who pursues dispelling false and unscientific claims. ...

McDonald was particularly disturbed that astronomer J. Allen Hynek, had not alerted the scientific community to the fact that Project Blue Book was withholding some of the most anomalous and compelling UFO reports. Hynek argued that if he had exposed this, the Air Force would have dumped him as Blue Book’s consultant; Hynek was the only scientist formally studying UFOs for the government. This was the beginning of a rift between the men that would never be entirely reconciled. Dr. J. Allen Hynek. ... Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. ...

From the mid-1960’s, McDonald devoted much of his time to trying to persuade journalists, politicians and his colleagues that UFOs were the most pressing issue facing American science. He gave dozens of lectures, and wrote volumes of letters to newspapers, to his peers (especially at scientific journals) and to politicians. He wrote the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, arguing that they needed to radically shift their superficial perspective towards UFOs. In response, the Air Force determined that they needed to "fireproof" themselves against McDonald’s statements. The United States Air Force Research Laboratory with headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was created in October 1997. ...

McDonald knew that promoting the extraterrestrial hypothesis could damage his credibility, but he was so convinced of its viability that he plowed ahead, regardless of consequences. He managed to secure limited support from a few prominent figures, such as United Nations Secretary General U Thant, who arranged for McDonald to speak to the UN’s Outer Space Affairs Group on June 7, 1967. Additionally in 1967, McDonald noted, "There is no sensible alternative to the utterly shocking hypothesis that UFOs are extraterrestrial probes". (Randles, 65) The Extraterrestrial hypothesis (sometimes shortened to ETH) is the hypothesis that UFO reports are best explained as creatures from other planets, occupying physical extraterrestrial spacecraft visiting Earth. ... United Nations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Maha Thray Sithu U Thant (January 22, 1909 – November 25, 1974) was a Burmese diplomat and the third Secretary-General of the United Nations, from 1961 to 1971. ...

McDonald formed alliances with those on the Condon Committee who disagreed with Condon’s leadership and who wanted to undertake long-term UFO studies. McDonald inadvertently played a major role in the Condon Committee’s controversy when he was given a copy of the so-called "Trick Memo" which outlined how the Committee could reach a forgone conclusion while simultaneously appearing neutral. [Edward Condon]] tried to get McDonald fired from the University of Arizona following the exposure of this memorandum.

When the Condon Committee issued their final report, its conclusion that there was nothing unusual about UFO reports (and that further research was not worthwhile) was generally accepted. McDonald, however, was one of a few prominent figures offering detailed critiques against the report’s conclusions and methodology.

As a leading atmospheric phyicist, McDonald was one of many experts who testified before congress in the 1960s against the development of supersonic transport airplanes, for fear that they would damage the ozone layer. A supersonic transport (SST) is a civil aircraft designed to transport passengers at speeds greater than the speed of sound. ... The ozone layer, or ozonosphere layer (rarely used term), is that part of the Earths atmosphere which contains relatively high concentrations of ozone (O3). ...

McDonald engaged in an often savagely adversarial relationship with aviation journalist and UFO debunker Philip J. Klass, who had argued in his first book (UFOs: Identified, 1968) that nearly all UFOs might be explained as a type of previously unknown ball lightning. At first, the duo exchanged cordial letters on the subject. Initially, Klass was rather guarded in his application of the plasma theory, and McDonald agreed that it might explain a small portion of UFO reports. However, Klass quickly expanded his hypothesis arguing that most if not all UFOs could be explaned as plasmas. McDonald thought this was absurd, and offered a detailed rebuttal against Klass's thesis. To many observers--even those skeptical of UFOs--McDonald's critique of Klass's arguments demonstrated that Klass lacked even a basic understanding of the theories he proposed. This article is about Philip Julian Klass, the UFO researcher. ... Ball Lightning Ball lightning is a natural phenomenon, or debatably, a pseudoscientific theory. ...

In late 1967, McDonald secured a modest grant from the Office of Naval Research in order to study cloud formations in Australia. while in Australia, McDonald conducted some UFO research on his own time. Klass mounted an extended, concerted campaign against McDonald, arguing that he had squandered government funds. The ONR responded by announcing that they knew of McDonald’s UFO interests and had no objections to his personal hobbies. The University of Arizona came to McDonald's defense, announcing that McDonald's UFO research was done on his own time, and had no adverse impact on his regular teaching and research duties at the university. Cumulus of fair weather A cloud is a visible mass of condensed droplets or ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body. ...

Klass then demonstrated that McDonald was spending at least small sums of government research funds on UFO research, and the ONR, apparently fearing controversy, decided to no longer fund McDonald’s cloud research. Tom McIver writes that afterwards, "Klass accused McDonald of misusing public funds, resulting in a traumatic government investigation and audit (in which he was cleared, though he committed suicide not long afterwards)."[3]

McDonald spoke before the United States Congress for a UFO hearing in 1968. In part, he stated his opinion that “UFOs are entirely real and we do not know what they are, because we have laughed them out of court. The possibility that these are extraterrestrial devices, that we are dealing with surveillance from some advanced technology, is a possibility I take very seriously.” (Clark, 368) McDonald emphasized that he accepted the ETH as a possibility not due to any specific evidence in its favor, but because he judged competing hypotheses as inadequate. Congress in Joint Session. ...

In 1969, McDonald was a speaker at an American Association for the Advancement of Science UFO symposium. There he delivered a lecture, "Science in Default", which Jerome Clark calls "one of the most powerful scientific defenses of UFO reality ever mounted." (Clark, 370) McDonald discussed in detail a handful of well documented UFO cases which seemed, he thought, to defy interpretation by conventional science. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an organization that promotes cooperation between scientists, defends scientific freedom, encourages scientific responsibility and supports scientific education for the betterment of all humanity. ... Jerome Clark is an American researcher and writer, specializing in unidentified flying objects and other anomalous phenomena, and he is also a songwriter of some note. ...

McDonald’s tireless UFO efforts were exacting a toll: he was becoming professionally isolated, and his marriage was faltering. Beyond Klass and Condon, McDonald butted heads with many other prominent figures, including Donald Menzel of Harvard University. McDonald's personality may have been a factor in these confrontations; even his friends described him as sometimes forceful and impatient, while others, less charitably, called him blunt and abrasive. Donald Howard Menzel (April 11, 1901 – December 14, 1976) was an American astronomer. ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ...

In March, 1971, McDonald's wife Betsy told him she wanted a divorce. McDonald seems to have began plannng his suicide immediately afterwards. He finished a few articles he was writing (UFO-related and otherwise), and made plans for the storage of his notes, papers, and research. In April, 1971, he attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head. He survived, but wasblinded. For a short period, McDonald was committed to the psychiatric ward of a Tucson, Arizona hospital. He recovered a degree of peripheral vision, and made plans to return to his teaching position. Divorce or dissolution of marriage is the ending of a marriage before the death of either spouse, which can be contrasted with an annulment, which is a declaration that a marriage is void, though the effects of marriage may be recognized in such unions, such as spousal support, child custody... Suicide (from Latin sui caedere, to kill oneself) is the act of willfully ending ones own life. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Nickname: The Old Pueblo Official website: http://www. ... Peripheral vision is a part of vision that occurs outside the very center of gaze. ...

However, the plans seem to have been a ruse designed to reduce suspicion that he was planning another suicide attempt. On June 13, 1971, a family, walking along a creek close to the bridge spanning the cañon Del Oro near Tucson, found a body that was later identified as McDonald’s. A 39 guage revolver was found close to him, as well as a note. Clark writes that the "suicide note tersely noted the particular domestic development that led to the decision to end his life." (Clark, 371) Kurt Cobains alleged suicide note. ...

Four of McDonald’s peers from the University of Arizona wrote a reminiscence of their colleague, calling him "a man of great integrity and great courage. He was loved and admired by a great many people ... he made a lasting impact on many facets of atmospheric sciences ... and he will be missed much more than we now realize." (Clark, 371)

Books on James E. McDonald

The 2003 book, Firestorm: Dr. James E. McDonald's Fight for UFO Science, by Ann Druffel is to date the only full length biography of McDonald. Ann Druffel comments

Sources

• Jerome Clark; The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial; Visible Ink, 1998; ISBN 1578590299
• Jenny Randles; The UFO Conspiracy: The First Forty Years; Barnes and Noble Books, 1987; ISBN 1566191955

External links

• Statement on UFOs by James MacDonald to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 1968 (PDF)
• Science in Default: Twenty-Two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations, by James E. McDonald
• FBI FILE OF DR. JAMES E. McDONALD
• UFOs: Extraterestrial Probes? By Dr. James E. McDonald