In the fall of 1966, both Vallée and Hynek were invited to consult on the recently-established scientific study of UFOs at the University of Colorado, Boulder, but were barred from participating for their public advocacy of UFO research. These books brought a level of scientific rigour to the field previously unseen on the side of the ETH advocates, and earned the still-young Vallée a reputation as a leading authority on the UFO phenomenon. Vallée published two books on UFOs in this period, Anatomy of a Phenomenon, and A Challenge to Science, both of which advocated the popular extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs, or ETH.

Together with a secret network of academic scientists, Hynek and Vallée shared their UFO research and discussed possible explanations. Allen Hynek, scientific consultant to Project Blue Book, the UFO investigation group of the US Air Force. With a newfound interest in UFOs, Vallée moved to Evanston, Illinois in 1962 to begin a PhD in computer science at Northwestern University. Six years later, while working as an astronomer at the Paris Observatory, Vallée witnessed the destruction of tapes tracking the movement of a bright, unknown object orbiting the earth in retrograde. In 1955, a 16-year-old Vallée saw a disc with a half-dome on top hovering half a kilometre away from his home in Pontoise, France. For his insightful and rigorously scientific approach to the field, Vallée has earned a reputation as the grandfather of ufology, and in his illustrious career, he pioneered an entirely new explanation for the UFO phenomenon. By the late 1960s, Vallée drew ufology’s attention to the deeply symbolic qualities of UFO reports, and demonstrated a continuity of symbols, actions, and archetypes from historical folklore and mythology. There is no more influential thinker in the study of UFOs than the French astronomer, computer scientist, and ufologist, Jacques Vallée.

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