Jacques Vallée

Jacques Vallée
Jacques Vallée (right) with J. Allen Hynek
Born	Jacques Fabrice Vallée (1939-09-24) September 24, 1939 (age 77) Pontoise, Val-d'Oise, France
Residence	San Francisco, California
Occupation	Venture capitalist, computer scientist, author, ufologist, former astronomer

Jacques Fabrice Vallée (French: [vale]; born September 24, 1939) is a venture capitalist, computer scientist, author, ufologist and former astronomer currently residing in San Francisco, California.

In mainstream science, Vallée is notable for co-developing the first computerized mapping of Mars for NASA and for his work at SRI International on the network information center for the ARPANET, a precursor to the modern Internet. Vallée is also an important figure in the study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), first noted for a defense of the scientific legitimacy of the extraterrestrial hypothesis and later for promoting the interdimensional hypothesis.

Vallée was born in Pontoise, France in 1939. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the Sorbonne, followed by his Master of Science in astrophysics from the University of Lille. He began his professional life as an astronomer at the Paris Observatory in 1961. He was awarded the Jules Verne Prize for his first science-fiction novel in French.

He moved to the United States in 1962 and began working in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, at whose McDonald Observatory he worked on NASA's first project making a detailed informational map of Mars.