Itzhak Bentov was an Israeli rocket scientist, biomedical engineer, and author known for his work on "the mechanics of consciousness." He designed [[Israel]]'s first rocket for the War of Independence and invented the steerable cardiac catheter, which paved the way for many biomedical engineering inventions[^1]. In the fall of 1970, Bentov attended a conference in Rye, New York, titled "Exploring the Energy Fields of Man," where he spoke of a twenty-three-year-old Israeli man with extraordinary powers of [[Psychokinesis|psychokinesis]] and [[Telepathy|mental telepathy]]. During a demonstration at Israel's University of Technology, this man, [[Uri Geller]], had reportedly stopped and started broken watches, moved the needle on a stationary compass, and bent metal by thought alone[^1]. Bentov's lecture intrigued [[Andrija Puharich]], who was also present at the conference. Puharich, seeking to find a psychic who could be tested under laboratory conditions to secure a government research contract, asked Bentov for more information about Geller. This introduction ultimately led to Puharich bringing Geller to the United States for testing by the [[CIA]] at [[Stanford Research Institute]] (SRI)[^1]. ### Footnotes [^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.