The Man Who Named UFOs

Captain Edward Ruppelt was the first director of Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force's official UFO investigation programme. He is credited with coining the term "Unidentified Flying Object" — deliberately chosen to replace the culturally loaded "flying saucer" and to impose scientific neutrality on the investigation.

Under Ruppelt's leadership from 1951 to 1953, Blue Book underwent its most serious period of investigation, with genuine scientific rigour applied to incoming reports. Ruppelt recruited civilian scientists and worked to establish objective evaluation criteria.

The Report That Troubled Him

After leaving the Air Force, Ruppelt wrote The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1956) — widely considered the most authoritative insider account of early government UFO investigation. A revised edition added three chapters suggesting the phenomenon was less explicable than he had previously implied. He died in 1960 at age 37, leaving unresolved questions about the conclusions he was reaching in the final period of his life.