American physicist of the first rank, a founder of quantum theory in the United States, director of the National Bureau of Standards from 1945 to 1951, and the man whose name is on the Condon Report.
Two careers worth reading together
Condon was himself a target of the loyalty investigations of the late 1940s, denounced by the House Un-American Activities Committee and stripped of clearances he later regained, which cost him years and, by most accounts, a good deal of his patience for public controversy. Twenty years later he took the Air Force contract that produced the study on which Project Blue Book was closed, and wrote a summary far more dismissive than the case work behind it.
What that means for the report
It does not make the report dishonest, and Condon’s own scientific record is not in question. It does mean the study was directed by a man with strong prior views, publicly expressed during the work, running a project whose coordinator had already written the Low Memo 1966. Anyone citing the report in either direction should know both facts.
Connections
Condon Report · Low Memo 1966 · Project Blue Book · J. Allen Hynek · Committee to Review Project Blue Book · Robertson Panel