John Mack, Pultizer winner, dies

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 29 (UPI) -- John E. Mack, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his study of T.E. Lawrence and who researched people reporting encounters with extraterrestrials, has died at age 74.

Mack was a Harvard Medical School professor and the John E. Mack Institute in Cambridge, Mass., released news of his death. Mack was crossing a street in London Monday when he was hit by a car driven by a drunken driver, the institute said in a release. London authorities said Mack was dead at the scene.

Mack was in London for a conference on T.E. Lawrence -- "Lawrence of Arabia." Mack's "A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence" won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1977.

He also interviewed some 200 individuals who said they had had encounters with alien beings. Mack reportedly believed such encounters were real, although perhaps more spiritual than physical, information on the institute Web site stated. That work was berated by other academics, but Mack held that the spiritual or transformational aspects of those alleged encounters gave important psychoanalytic insights.