Russell Targ, born in Chicago and raised in New York City, is a physicist and author who was a pioneer in the development of the laser and laser applications, and was co-founder of the Stanford Research Institute's investigation into psychic abilities in the 1970s and 1980s-the Real X-Files. His work in this new area, called remote viewing, was published in Nature, The Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Targ has a B.S. in Math and Physics from Queens College, and did graduate work in physics at Columbia University. He is co-author of seven books dealing with the scientific investigation of psychic abilities: most recently: The End of Suffering and Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness, and the author of more than a hundred scientific papers.  In 1997 Targ retired from Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space Co. as a senior staff scientist, where he developed airborne laser systems for the detection of wind shear. He now teaches remote viewing internationally, pursues ESP research in Palo Alto, California, and is also publishing special editions of classic books is psychical research.

He explains: "I have been visually handicapped since childhood and yet performed groundbreaking research in the development of the laser and optics and the recently declassified, NASA-sponsored research in 'remote viewing.' I am grounded in the world of science and yet co-created the Cold War spy program that became the real X-Files-the CIA- and NASA-sponsored work in "remote viewing" that has only recently been declassified. My memoir also reads like a cultural history of the last half of the twentieth century. I relate unique anecdotes about my interactions with such people as Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand, and Alan Alda, among others, including my brother-in-law, World chess champion Bobby Fischer whom I helped get out of a Japanese jail. I describe how I got a driving license for a motorcycle, which I have ridden for 35 years, in spite of being 'legally blind.' On the laser side, my Lockheed team and I developed a laser sensor to measure winds aloft in support of the shuttle at Kennedy Space Center for NASA. Such a system could have prevented the Challenger disaster."