A. J. Gevaerd

Ademar José Gevaerd was Brazil's most prominent modern ufologist, who abandoned a career as a chemistry teacher in the mid-1980s to dedicate himself full-time to UFO research, publishing his first magazine, Ufologia Nacional e Internacional, in 1985 before founding the longer-running and highly influential Revista UFO later that same year, a publication that ran for over three decades and became the central gathering point for Brazilian ufology's leading researchers. Gevaerd also founded and directed the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas de Discos Voadores (Brazilian Center for Flying Saucer Research, CBPDV) and served as MUFON's national director for Brazil, giving Brazilian case research formal institutional standing within the largest international UFO investigation network. Over his career he personally conducted more than 700 field investigations across Brazil, including work related to the 1977 Colares 'chupa-chupa' wave and the 1996 Varginha incident, Brazil's most famous modern case, and lectured in 29 countries, helping internationalize awareness of the substantial, often overlooked body of South American UFO case material. His Revista UFO interview with Captain Uyrangê Hollanda in 1997 remains one of the most significant primary-source documents in Brazilian ufology, having brought the secret Operação Prato military operation to public light for the first time. Gevaerd died in December 2022 at age 60.