Robert Scott Lazar is an American scientist who claimed to have worked on reverse engineering extraterrestrial technology at a site called S-4 near the Area 51 Groom Lake operating location. Lazar said that the UFOs use gravity wave propulsion and are powered by the (then unsynthesized) element 115. He said to have read US government briefing documents that describe alien involvement in human affairs over the past 10,000 years. Lazar's claims resulted in bringing the secret Area 51 site to the attention of the public.

Universities from which Lazar claimed to hold degrees show no record of him. He owns and runs a scientific supply company.

Claims

Lazar is responsible for bringing the secret test site Area 51 to the attention of the general public. In May 1989, Lazar appeared in an interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on Las Vegas TV station KLAS, under the pseudonym "Dennis" and with his face hidden, to discuss his purported employment at "S-4", a subsidiary facility he claimed exists near United States Air Force facility Area 51. He said the facility was adjacent to Papoose Lake, which is located south of the main Area 51 facility at Groom Lake, and included concealed aircraft hangars built into a mountainside. He said that he was involved in the reverse engineering of one of nine flying saucers. Lazar appeared unmasked and under his own name in a subsequent interview with Knapp in November.

Lazar claims that the propulsion of the studied vehicle was fueled by atomic element 115 (moscovium, first synthesized in 2003), and that this was used to generate gravity waves. He also claims that he was given briefing documents describing the historical involvement with Earth for the past 10,000 years by extraterrestrial beings, Grey aliens, from a planet that orbited the twin binary star system Zeta Reticuli.

Lazar's story garnered media attention and controversy, and has some supporters; however, the majority of the scientific community remains skeptical. Lazar states to have worked as a scientist "in the Meson Physics facility" at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has stated that his academic records were erased in an effort by authorities to discredit his story.

Background
Education and qualifications

Lazar states that he holds a master's degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a master's degree in electronic technology from California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Investigations into his background could not find any records of Lazar ever having attended either institution.

Stanton Friedman, a prominent ufologist, verified that Lazar took electronics courses in the late 1970s at Pierce Junior College in Los Angeles, at the same time Lazar contends he attended MIT in Massachusetts. He further determined that Lazar graduated from high school in the bottom third of his class, and that the only science course he took was chemistry.