Summary
Dr. Lincoln LaPaz was the Director of the University of New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics from 1945 to 1966 and the leading American meteoriticist of the mid-20th century. In January 1949 he was engaged by the 4th Army Counterintelligence Corps to investigate the New Mexico Green Fireball Phenomenon — a series of anomalous bright green luminous objects repeatedly observed over nuclear weapons facilities in New Mexico. Using his professional expertise in meteoritics and extensive field triangulation work, LaPaz formally concluded the objects were not conventional meteors: they flew horizontally (not ballistically), produced no fragmentation, generated no sonic booms consistent with their apparent size, and left no meteoritic debris. His investigation is the earliest formal scientific study of UAP in the United States and remains the most credentialed peer assessment of the Green Fireball phenomenon.
Roles
- -Director, Institute of Meteoritics, University of New Mexico (1945-1966)
- -Mathematical Astronomer and Meteoriticist
- -Principal Scientific Investigator, New Mexico Green Fireball Phenomenon (4th Army CIC, 1949)
Organizations
Education
- -Ph.D., Mathematical Astronomy, University of Chicago
- -M.A., Mathematics, University of Kansas
- -B.A., Mathematics, University of Kansas
Early Career
- -Mathematics and astronomy faculty positions at multiple universities through the 1920s-1940s
- -Expert in meteorite recovery, trajectory analysis, and spectral classification — personally recovered or classified dozens of meteorite falls across the American Southwest and Great Plains
- -Recognized authority whose methodology for determining meteorite fall ellipses was adopted as the standard approach by the international community
- -Appointed founding Director of the University of New Mexico Institute of Meteoritics in 1945 — built the program into the preeminent American meteoritics research center