Uri Geller

Uri Geller is an Israeli-British entertainer born in Tel Aviv in 1946. He became famous in the 1970s for television demonstrations in which he appeared to bend spoons and keys and to read minds, which he presented as psychic abilities.

In August 1973 the physicists Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ tested him at Stanford Research Institute in work funded by the CIA. In one series he sat in a shielded room and tried to reproduce drawings made out of his sight. The researchers said he had shown a paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner, and in 1974 they published results including the Geller trials in the journal Nature, which printed an editorial noting the referees' reservations.

Critics said the controls were inadequate. The magician James Randi said he could reproduce Geller's effects with ordinary conjuring and demonstrated similar feats, and a 1973 appearance on The Tonight Show, where he was given props he had not prepared, produced no effects. Mainstream scientists do not accept that he has paranormal powers.