[1][2] Born in Florence, Colorado in 1901 and raised in Leadville, he learned to read very early, and soon could send and receive messages in Morse code, taught by his father.

During World War II, Menzel was commissioned as a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy and asked to head a division of intelligence, where he used his many-sided talents, including deciphering enemy codes.

His colleague Dr. Dorrit Hoffleit recalls one of his first actions in the position was asking his secretary to destroy a third of the plates sight unseen, resulting in their permanent loss from the record.

On 19 June 1936, he led the Harvard-MIT expedition to the steppes of Russia (at Akbulak in Orenburg Oblast, southern Ural) to observe a total eclipse.

Menzel observed many total solar eclipses, often leading the expeditions, including Catalina, California (10 September 1923, cloudy), Camptonville, California (28 April 1930), Fryeburg, Maine (31 August 1932), Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota (30 June 1954), the Atlantic coast of Massachusetts (2 October 1959), northern Italy (15 February 1951), Orono, Maine (20 July 1963, cloudy), Athens/Sunion Road, Greece (20 May 1966), Arequipa, Peru (12 November 1966), Miahuatlan, south of Oaxaca, Mexico (7 March 1970), Prince Edward Island Canada (10 July 1972), and western Mauritania (30 June 1973), in addition to the other three mentioned above.

[9] He proudly held the informal record for greatest number of observed solar eclipses, a "title" later broken by his student, colleague, and co-author Jay Pasachoff.

He also believed in the EPH (exploded planet hypothesis), stating, 'Presque toutes ces petites planètes circulent entre les orbites de Mars et Jupiter.

On admet qu'elles représentent les fragments dispersés d'une grande planète qui se serait désintégrée.

Subsequent editions were prepared after Menzel's death by his student Jay Pasachoff; the current version is one of the Peterson Field Guides.

One of Menzel's earliest public involvements in UFO matters was his appearance on a radio documentary directed and narrated by Edward R. Murrow in mid-1950.

(Swords, 98) Menzel claimed to have his own UFO experience on 3 March 1955 while returning from the North Pole on the daily Air Force Weather "Ptarmigan" flight.

[19] Menzel often explained that atmospheric hazes or temperature inversions could distort stars or planets, and make them appear to be larger than in reality, unusual in their shape, and in motion.

The minor planet 1967 Menzel was named in his honor,[20] as well as a small lunar crater located in the southeast of Mare Tranquilitatis, the Sea of Tranquility.