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.
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]