Jacques Vallée

Jacques Vallée, born in Pontoise, France, on 24 September 1939, is a French Internet pioneer, computer scientist, venture capitalist, author, ufologist and astronomer who lives in San Francisco and Paris. He began as an astronomer at the Paris Observatory and co-developed the first computerized map of Mars for NASA in 1963. After a PhD in industrial engineering and computer science from Northwestern University in 1967 he managed information systems at the Stanford University Computer Center, then joined Douglas Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center at SRI International, where he worked on the network information center for the ARPANET. At the Institute for the Future from 1972 to 1976 he succeeded Paul Baran as principal investigator on a National Science Foundation computer networking project that developed one of the first ARPANET conferencing systems, Planning Network (PLANET), and in 1976 he founded the spin-off company InfoMedia. He later became a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, and he is also an important figure in the study of unidentified flying objects.