Professor Lyle Crawford Kent was a scientist stationed at the White Sands military base in 1946. He was part of the team that interrogated the alien Dr. Tachyon soon after Tachyon's arrival on Earth. Kent's claim to fame is the fact that he was the person that coined the term "tachyon," when the alien explained that his spaceship's propulsion system made use of an hitherto unknown particle to travel at faster-than-light speeds. Soon the military confused things and started referring to the alien as "Doctor Tachyon," the name by which the Takisian alien would become known on Earth.