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FigureJohn E. Mack (1929–2004)

aka John E. Mack (1929–2004) · John Mack · John E. Mack · Mack

Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry; Pulitzer Prize 1977 for *A Prince of Our Disorder* (a biography of T. E. Lawrence); investigated alleged abductees beginning in 1990; *Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens* (1994); subject of a Harvard formal investigation 1994–1995, which eventually cleared him.

John E. Mack with abduction researcher Budd Hopkins during a hypnosis session in Istanbul.
John E. Mack with abduction researcher Budd Hopkins during a hypnosis session in Istanbul. Wikipedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Becket01 · 1995

Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry; founding head of the psychiatry department at Cambridge Hospital. Pulitzer Prize for Biography 1977 for A Prince of Our Disorder, a study of T. E. Lawrence. Mack began interviewing self-reported abductees in 1990 at the suggestion of Budd Hopkins; ultimately worked with over 200. Abduction (1994) and Passport to the Cosmos (1999) presented his clinical findings — he stopped well short of asserting the experiences were literally extraterrestrial but argued they could not be reduced to known psychopathology. Harvard Medical School convened a confidential faculty committee in 1994 to investigate his methods — the only such committee ever convened to review a tenured Harvard professor’s clinical work. After fifteen months the committee declined to censure him; the dean’s August 1995 letter explicitly reaffirmed his academic freedom. Mack was killed by a drunk driver in London on 27 September 2004 while attending a T. E. Lawrence Society lecture.

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