Russell Targ
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 👤 Person
Contents 6
| Type | Person |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Targ |
| On the Timeline | 1 event, 1982 |
Russell Targ (born 11 April 1934) is an American physicist and parapsychologist who, with Harold Puthoff, developed "remote viewing" at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in the 1970s, work that led to the U.S. government's Stargate program. Scientists generally regard remote viewing as pseudoscience.[1]
Early life and laser work
Targ was born in Chicago, the son of book editor William Targ. He earned a degree in physics from Queens College in 1954 and did graduate work at Columbia University. He worked on lasers at Technical Research Group, where he co-wrote a 1962 paper with laser pioneer Gordon Gould, and at Sylvania Electronic Systems. From 1986 to 1998 he was a senior staff scientist at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, working on laser systems for detecting wind shear, a hazard to aircraft.[1]
Remote viewing at SRI
Targ joined SRI in 1972 to work with Puthoff and stayed until 1982. Their tests of psychic Ingo Swann that year attracted CIA interest and led to a government-funded program, later known as Stargate, which ran until 1995 and cost about $20 million. The SRI team published papers in Nature in 1974 and Proceedings of the IEEE in 1976, and Targ and Puthoff described their work in the 1977 book Mind-Reach.[1][2]
Criticism
Psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann could not reproduce the SRI results and found cues in the session transcripts that could have helped judges match descriptions to targets. A 1988 report by the U.S. National Research Council called the Targ–Puthoff studies "fatally flawed", and skeptics including Ray Hyman and Martin Gardner criticised the work. In 1982 Targ co-founded Delphi Associates to sell psychic consulting; a claimed success in predicting silver futures was not repeated.[1][3]
Later life
Targ has written many books on psychic abilities, including Limitless Mind (2004), The Reality of ESP (2012) and Third Eye Spies (2023). He was married to Joan Fischer, sister of chess champion Bobby Fischer, and helped Fischer seek German citizenship in 2004; their daughter Elisabeth Targ was a psychiatrist and parapsychologist. He is legally blind.[1]
On the UAP Timeline
- Pat Price's alien base reports (July 1982) — The Army's remote viewing chief finds 1973 reports of claimed underground UAP bases.
References
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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