Claude Poher

Claude Poher is a French astrophysicist and engineer who spent 30 years in space research and aeronautics at CNES, France's national space agency, after training in astronomy and working as a CNRS researcher and Air France instructor. Introduced to the UFO subject by J. Allen Hynek during a 1969 U.S. trip and later associated with Hynek's informal 'Invisible College' network of sympathetic scientists, Poher applied statistical methods to worldwide UFO reports, presenting an analysis to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1975 that argued the phenomenon showed patterns inconsistent with simple misperception. This work led directly to the founding, on May 1, 1977, of GEPAN (Groupe d'Étude des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés), the world's first government agency created specifically to apply scientific methodology to UFO reports, operating within CNES itself — an institutional legitimacy no other country's UFO research has matched before or since. Poher served as GEPAN's inaugural director from 1977 until 1979, establishing its case-intake procedures and its now-influential four-tier classification of case certainty. GEPAN evolved through the successor agencies SEPRA and, since 2005, GEIPAN, which remains active within CNES today. Poher's tenure set the template for what a rigorous, state-backed, non-sensationalist UFO investigation could look like, distinguishing French official ufology from the more adversarial U.S. Project Blue Book model.