EJ Center
Elroy John Center (referred to in documents as "EJ Center") was a senior research chemical engineer at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, where he worked from 1939 to 1957. Center is notable in UAP research for two intersecting reasons: his documented participation in Battelle's 1949 classified analysis of Nitinol (Nickel-Titanium Alloy) — a shape-memory alloy not officially discovered until 1961 — and his private disclosure, made after leaving Battelle in 1957, that he had been responsible for studying "Parts retrieved from a flying saucer."
| Role | Senior Research Chemical Engineer, Battelle Memorial Institute |
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Nitinol Research at Battelle (1949)
Center co-authored the subsection "Analytical Methods for Titanium Based Alloys" in Battelle's 1949 progress reports on shape-memory titanium alloys. This research was conducted under contract with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (contract number 33-38-3736) and covered the period of September 1 through October 21, 1949. The work was classified under the Atomic Energy Commission's "restricted" designation — a private-sector classification standard inaccessible even to cleared Special Access Program holders — and was not declassified until 2010.
Nitinol, formally a nickel-titanium alloy, possesses two properties of particular interest: superelasticity (it cannot be permanently deformed under high mechanical stress) and shape memory (it returns to its original form when heated after deformation). These properties correspond to the anomalous debris described by intelligence officer Jesse Marcel following his inspection of the 1947 Roswell Crash debris field alongside rancher Mac Brazel. Marcel described material that was exceedingly light and would retain its shape after deformation. The Roswell debris was subsequently shipped to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — the same installation that contracted Battelle in 1949.
Personal Disclosure
After leaving Battelle in 1957, Center reportedly told a companion of his daughter's that he had been "responsible for a project which required him to study Parts retrieved from a flying saucer." This disclosure, made in the late 1950s, was first recorded in 1992 when the acquaintance came forward to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). It was published by Dr. Irene Scott of the MUFON board of directors in the 1994 MUFON Journal article "The Ohio UFO Crash Connection and Other Stories," under the subsection "Decoding the I-Beam." The I-beam reference connects the account to the specific debris type — a structural element bearing unusual markings — that Jesse Marcel described as part of the Roswell field material.
The evidentiary weight of this account rests on its chronological independence: Center made his verbal disclosure around 1957–1958, more than fifty years before the 1949 Battelle nitinol research was declassified in 2010. MUFON's 1994 documentation could not have been informed by or retroactively fabricated from the classified contract documents, as those were unavailable. The convergence of Center's private statement and the declassified record of his actual research — on the same material, from the same institution, at the same time — is treated by UAP researchers as the strongest documented link between Battelle Memorial Institute and analysis of Roswell crash materials.