Joseph Kaplan

Joseph Kaplan (1902-1998) was an American physicist renowned for his expertise in the physics of the upper atmosphere. In late 1948 and early 1949, he participated in a Los Alamos conference investigating green fireballs sighted over New Mexico, alongside scientists like Lincoln La Paz and Edward Teller, amid Air Force Project Sign inquiries into potential UFOs. The group analyzed trajectories, colors, and lack of fragments, debating meteoritic origins without resolution. Kaplan later inquired about the unresolved case to ATIC officers. In 1954, he proposed stereo cameras with diffraction gratings at Air Force bases to spectrum-analyze UFO lights, an idea revisited but deemed impractical by the 1966-1968 Condon Committee. No major publications or testimony by Kaplan in UAP fields are noted beyond these contributions.