Astrophysicist, born in Florence, Colorado, USA. He studied at the universities of Denver and Princeton, then joined the staff of the Lick Observatory, CA, and was appointed director of the Harvard College Observatory (195466). He did valuable work on planetary atmospheres and on the composition of the Sun.
He was one of the leading astronomers of his era, and also earned noteriety as an early skeptic of UFOs as an extraordinary phenomenon.
Biography
Born in Florence, Colorado, Menzel demonstrated a precocious intellect: before beginning kindergarten he had not only learned to read but had also learned morse code.
At 16 years old, Menzel enrolled at the University of Colorado to study chemistry. Menzel earned an internship at Princeton University, and spent summer vacations at Harvard University as a research assistant to Harlow Shapley.
Menzel studied at the University of Denver and received his Ph.D. in 1924, Menzel taught at the University of Iowa and Ohio State University before being hired as assistant astronomer at the Lick Observatory in California in 1926.
Menzel initially performed solar research, but later concentrated on studying gaseous nebulae.
Menzel and UFOs
In addition to his academic and popular contributions to the field of astronomy, Menzel was a prominent skeptic concerning the reality of UFOs. He authored or co-authored three popular books debunking UFOs: Flying Saucers (1953), The World Of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age (1963), and The UFO Enigma: The Definitive Explanation of the UFO Phenomenon (1977). All of Menzel's UFO books argued that UFOs were nothing more than misidentification of prosaic phenomena such as stars, clouds and airplanes. In 1968, Menzel testified before the U.S. House Committee on Science and Astronautics - Symposium on UFOs, stating that he considered all UFO sightings to have natural explanations.
Perhaps Menzel's earliest public involvement in UFO matters was his appearance on a radio documentary directed and narrated by Edward R. Richard Greenwell writes "[m]ost UFO advocates considered him an 'archenemy.' Many of his [UFO] explanations were, in fact, reasonable, and Menzel certainly had the technical background to evaluate such data. (Greenwell, 229)
Some observers have argued that Menzel's UFO works are lacking. McDonald used the word "Menzelian" to describe the astronomer's approach to UFOs (which McDonald judged inadequate, dismissive and superficial). Ron Westrum, a sociologist known for his criticism of CSICOP and skeptics like Menzel, writes, "The paradox is that his UFO books represent quite shoddy science, in contrast to his better-known work in astrophysics." (Westrum, p 34) Westrum suggests that despite Menzel's "shoddy" UFO studies, "thanks to a type of halo effect, Menzel's reputation in astronomy buttressed his loosely put together scientific arguments." 35)
Menzel's critics also report that his UFO theories were literally laughable. While dining one evening, Hynek and some of the Committee's regular members
discussed Menzel's recent trip to Boulder. (Westrum, 35)
Though most of Menzel's harshest critcs were UFO researchers, negative criticism came from other fields: in 1959, prominent psychologist Carl Jung declared that Menzel "has not succeeded, despite all his efforts, in offering a satisfying explanation of even one authentic UFO report." (Jung, 147)
Menzel's 1949 UFO Sighting
However, Menzel's involvement in the phenomenon can be traced to a UFO encounter he reported to the U.S. Air Force in 1949. 387)
On May 12, 1949, Menzel and a chauffeur left Holloman Air Force Base, bound for Alamogordo, New Mexico. Though apparently motionless, the stars seemed to grow brighter, and Menzel reported that he realized the lights were in the wrong position to be Castor and Pollux. 388)
A few quick tests established that the lights were not due to reflections on either Menzel's eyeglasses or the car's windows. (Clark, 388)
In his formal report submitted to the Air Force only four days after the encounter, Menzel sketched the two round lights as he saw them, and included a few of his own calculations: if the lights had indeed been motionless, they must have been about "180 miles away" and quite large, perhaps "3/4 of a mile". (Clark, 388)
Menzel revisited the sighting in his first UFO book, Flying Saucers: (1953), and suggested that while he could not "explain the phenomenon in every detail" it was probably "merely a reflection of the moon" which had been "distorted by a layer of haze". (Clark, 388)
However, Menzel's later account differs from his first in a few critical ways:
His first report stated that he objects vanished suddenly: first one, then the other a few moments later. In his earlier report, Menzel described the lights as being about one-half the size of the full moon;Menzel, the National Security Agency and MJ-12
Physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman reported that his own research (including examination of Harvard University archives) showed that Menzel had served as a consultant to the National Security Agency.
The fact that Menzel had security clearance and worked with the U.S. government is not on its own extraordinary; What is somewhat unusual about Menzel's case, is that he held the rarefied "Top Secret Ultra" clearance, and as Westrum notes, that Menzel's dual membership "in the academic community and in the black world of military secret projects [were] apparently unknown to many colleagues and military contacts in the [U.S. Air Force's] Air Technical Intelligence Center." 36)
Friedman argues that Menzel's high-level clearance is evidence in favor of the existence of MJ-12, supposedly a secret governmental UFO study group established in 1947 which allegedly included Menzel in its membership. Given the near-consensus within the UFO research community that the MJ-12 never existed (at least by that name) and the documents supporting its reality are hoaxes, Friedman's interpretation of Menzel's security clearance is in the minority.
Cited as possible evidence against Menzel's membership or involvement in MJ-12 is his 1949 report of a UFO encounter to the U.S. Air Force. Sparks has argued that if Menzel was truly privy to secret UFO information since 1947 — when MJ-12 was supposedly founded — then Menzel would have no reason to send a "confidential" UFO report to the Air Force two years later for an account he thought "exceptional". Furthermore, Menzel's 1949 report makes no mention of any such group as MJ-12. Against this it has been argued that MJ-12 was the alleged control group, but the detailed UFO data collection was being carried out by other, lower-classified government intelligence groups, such as Project Grudge, then the Air Force's official public UFO study. Thus there would be no reason for Menzel to not report his sighting for Project Grudge to incorporate into their statistics.
UFO debunker Philip J. Klass, who found discrepancies in the documents and concluded they were faked, wrote:
The addition of the name of Dr. Donald Menzel, a world-famous astronomer and leading UFO-debunker, is an attempt at revenge by the MJ-12 counterfeiter. Menzel was hated and maligned by the "UFO-believers" during the first two decades of the UFO era. (Recently I was told by one UFOlogist that he suspected that I had replaced Menzel on MJ-12 following his death.) (Klass 1988:286-87)
However, these various arguments, pro and con, are all speculative and lead us no closer to knowing whether Menzel would have been associated with a hypothetical group such as MJ-12.
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