James Edward McDonald (May 7, 1920 – June 13, 1971) was an American atmospheric physicist and meteorologist. He is known for his scientific research in weather modification through cloud seeding, while working as an associate director at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics and as a professor of meteorology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. During the 1960s, McDonald campaigned in support of expanding UFO studies, and promoted the extraterrestrial hypothesis as a plausible explanation of UFO phenomena.
Early life and career McDonald was born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota. He served as a cryptographer in the United States Navy during World War II, and afterwards, married Betsy Hunt. McDonald received a B.A. in chemistry from the University of Omaha in 1942 and an M.S. in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1945, where he completed the thesis titled Summer air mass instability and its synoptic representation under the supervision of Thomas F. Malone. He went on to study physics at Iowa State University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1951. His Ph.D. thesis was supervised by Joseph M. Keller and is titled Radiation-Errors and Lag-Errors in the Measurement of Turbulent Temperature Fluctuations. After graduation, McDonald taught at the Naval Aerology School and at Iowa State University before moving to the University of Chicago for a year. In 1953, McDonald helped establish a meteorology and atmospherics program at the University of Arizona as a professor of meteorology. McDonald joined the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona in 1954 as an associate director and worked under the founding director Roscoe Braham Jr. McDonald remained at the same institution until his death. The University of Arizona library keeps a collection of McDonald's publications.
Meteorology research McDonald was known for his many studies on the formation and aerodynamics of raindrops and on the modeling of the scavenging effects of rain. He examined physical factors influencing raindrop shape, identifying surface tension, hydrostatic pressure, and aerodynamic pressure as the primary contributors to deformation and revealed with high-speed photography the significant role of boundary layer separation in shaping drops and influencing surface processes. He provided one of the first physical models of the rain-scavenging effect and analyzed the efficiency of raindrops in capturing airborne particles. The research found that larger particles like pollen are effectively removed by most rains, while smaller spores experience lower removal rates, emphasizing the role of rain-scavenging in pollen dissemination. In 1956, McDonald organized the Conference on the Scientific Basis of Weather Modification Studies at the University of Arizona, an influential event of the day to assess the state of weather modification research using cloud seeding and its future direction. He continued participation in the scientific discourse in weather modification and was a member of the Panel on Weather and Climate Modification headed by Gordon J. F. MacDonald, which was formed in 1963 by the appointment of the Committee on Atmospheric Science of the National Academy of Sciences.
UFO studies McDonald's first detailed, public discussion of UFOs was in a lecture given before an American Meteorological Society assembly in Washington, D.C., on October 5, 1966. Entitled "The Problem of UFOs", McDonald said that scientific scrutiny should be directed towards the small number of "unknowns", which he defined as a UFO reported by a "credible and trained observer as machine-like 'craft' which remained unidentified in spite of careful investigation." He noted that the vast majority of UFOs could become identified flying objects, and, in his estimation, only about 1% of UFOs were true "unknowns". In 1967, the Office of Naval Research supported McDonald to conduct his own UFO research, ostensibly to study the idea that some UFOs were misidentified clouds. He was able to examine the files of Project Blue Book at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and eventually concluded that the Air Force was mishandling UFO evidence. McDonald secured support from United Nations Secretary General U Thant, who arranged for McDonald to speak to the UN's Outer Space Affairs Group on June 7, 1967. Additionally in 1967, McDonald noted, "There is no sensible alternative to the utterly shocking hypothesis that UFOs are extraterrestrial probes". In his Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, McDonald made the following remarks regarding types of UFO accounts:
"the scientific world at large is in for a shock when it becomes aware of the astonishing nature of the UFO phenomenon and its bewildering complexity. I make that terse comment well aware that it invites easy ridicule; but intellectual honesty demands that I make clear that my two years' study convinces me that in the UFO problem lie scientific and technological questions that will challenge the ability of the world's outstanding scientists to explain - as soon as they start examining the facts. [...] the scientific community [...] has been casually ignoring as nonsense a matter of extraordinary scientific importance."
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