Abraham "Avi" Loeb, born February 26, 1962, in Beit Hanan, Israel, is an Israeli-American theoretical astrophysicist who serves as the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University. He served as chair of Harvard's astronomy department from 2011 to 2020 and chairs the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies.
Loeb has applied rigorous scientific methods to research on UAP and extraterrestrial technology. He gained international attention in 2018 by proposing that 'Oumuamua—the first detected interstellar object—could be an artificial light sail of extraterrestrial origin, based on its anomalous acceleration and flattened shape. Although this hypothesis proved controversial among his peers, it brought serious academic discussion of extraterrestrial technology into mainstream scientific discourse.
Loeb has led major initiatives in the search for evidence of extraterrestrial artifacts. In 2021, he founded the Galileo Project at Harvard, a systematic scientific search for physical evidence of extraterrestrial technological artifacts. The project deployed an observatory equipped with cameras, radar, and audio sensors to detect and characterize UAP using rigorous scientific methodology. In 2023, Loeb led an expedition to recover fragments from the ocean floor near Papua New Guinea from the interstellar meteor IM1 (CNEOS 2014-01-08), analyzing recovered spherules for isotopic anomalies.
His approach represents a significant shift in how the scientific establishment engages with the UAP phenomenon, applying mainstream academic methods to UAP research.