Edward Condon

Edward Uhler Condon ( born March 2, 1902 in Alamogordo, New Mexico, † March 26, 1974 in Boulder, Colorado) was an American physicist. According to him, the Franck -Condon principle is named among others.

During the Second World War he worked in the field of nuclear energy and the radar. From 1945 to 1951 he was director of the National Bureau of Standards. In 1946, Condon president of the American Physical Society, 1953, the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In the McCarthy era Edward Condon came before the Committee on Un-American Activities on the grounds that as a "trailer" of quantum mechanics, other "revolutionary" (meaning were Stalinist ) could represent theories. Edward Condon defended himself with a famous commitment to physics.

The lunar crater Condon is named after him.

Condon Committee

From 1966 to Condon initiated at the request of the Air Force a scientific research team at the University of Colorado, which was to investigate UFOs. Condon requested additional funding required, which were also granted to him, yet the group's work was discontinued after two years.

The work of the Condon group ended in a small scientific scandal: Condon wrote in the summary of the final report, his team would not show signs of the presence of extraterrestrial life forms still other phenomena that were not scientifically explainable found. Although this finding fits public statements Condon years before the official end of the project, but not so well with the content of the report itself: Of 59 cases studied, 33 were clarified. One of these statements was, for example, that this case involved " a natural phenomenon, which had been previously been observed neither after".

With the help of James McDonald reached a memorandum of Condon's administrative assistant Robert Low to the press. Accordingly, the investigation should indeed give the impression of objectivity, but reach only the Luftwaffe acceptable to the conclusion that there were no UFOs. Condon fired several employees who were responsible for this publication.

Thornton Page wrote after the publication of the report on the project in the American Journal of Physics that Condon's conclusions "not logically from the data" would. Similar comment, the Chairman of UFO - Committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics ( AIAA ), Joachim Kuettner.

In the scientific journal ' Science ' the Condon project was called (in reference to that supported by the U.S. secret invasion of Cuba ) even as " Heavenly Bay of Pigs landing."

Despite the accusations of the personal integrity of Edward Condon was never questioned, not even by physicists and other scientists (such as James McDonald and J. Allen Hynek ), which dealt with the UFO problem.

The psychologist of the project, David Saunders wrote, years later, a book about the work of Condon Group, where he is a link between Condon's behavior and his - suspected opposition to the later U.S. President Richard Nixon - originating from the McCarthy era.