Puthoff, Harold E. (1936-)

Physicist and parapsychologist born June 20, 1936, in Chicago, Illinois. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University where he worked from 1972 onward in the field of lasers. He was responsible for developing a tunable Raman laser that produced high-power radiation throughout the infrared section of the spectrum. He has supervised research for Ph.D. candidates in electrical engineering and applied physics at Stanford.

His interest in parapsychology was first manifest in his initiating research in biofeedback and biofield measurements. However, he has become most known for his research with his colleague Russell Targ at Stanford Research Institute on remote viewing, a type of test for ESP in which one person goes to a specified location and another person attempts to describe what the first person is seeing. They reported remarkable success and following the publication of their book, Mind Reach (1977), others replicated the process with equally remarkable success. Critics, however, found a methodological flaw in the giving of cues to the percipient. The critics stimulated new research which prevented the cueing and researcher Robert Jahn has also reported (in Beloff, 1988) positive results with the new format. Puthoff and Targ have also done research on Uri Geller.

(See also Ingo Swann )

Sources:

Beloff, John. The Importance of Psychical Research. London: Society for Psychical Research, 1988.

Puharich, Andrija, and Harold E. Puthoff. The Iceland Papers. 1979.

Puthoff, Harold E., and Russell Targ. "ESP Experiments with Uri Geller" In J. D. Morris, W. G. Roll, and R. L. Morris, eds. Research in Parapsychology 1973. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974.

——. "Information Transmission under Conditions of Sensory Shielding." Nature (October 1974).

——. "A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research." Proceedings, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 64 (1975).

——. "PK Experiments with Uri Geller and Ingo Swann." In J. D. Morris, W. G. Roll, and R. L. Morris, eds. Research in Parapsychology 1973. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974.

——. "Remote Viewing of Natural Targets." In J. D. Morris, W. G. Roll, and R. L. Morris, eds. Research in Parapsychology 1974. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1975.

——. "Replication Study on the Remote Viewing of Natural Targets." In J. D. Morris, W. G. Roll, and R. L. Morris, eds. Research in Parapsychology 1975. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976.