Uri Geller is an Israeli-British performer, author, and media personality who became internationally famous in the 1970s for apparent spoon bending, telepathy, and other claimed psychic feats. He presented the effects as genuine abilities rather than stage magic and became a recurring subject of laboratory tests, television appearances, and public controversy.

Geller became an international celebrity in the 1970s through television demonstrations of spoon bending, drawing reproduction, and apparent mind reading. Scientists and magicians argued intensely over whether the performances showed psychic ability, experimental weakness, or familiar conjuring methods. Geller turned that controversy into a long career of appearances, books, art, business, and self-promotion. Declassified records of government-linked tests later gave a documented institutional setting to some episodes without resolving the broader debate over his performances.

Researchers at Stanford Research Institute conducted experiments with Geller during the era of U.S. intelligence interest in anomalous cognition. Supporters cite selected results as evidence of unusual perception, while magicians and skeptical investigators argue that familiar techniques, weak controls, and showmanship can account for his performances. Geller has also connected his story to intelligence work, extraterrestrial themes, and later public predictions, claims that vary in documentation.

In later life, Geller continued performing while building collections and a museum around his long public career. He also repeatedly connected himself to intelligence, political, and celebrity circles, ensuring that new anecdotes renewed interest in older tests. The durability of his persona rests on this blend of showmanship, personal access, and unresolved institutional history.

Geller is a major cultural figure in consciousness and psi and the history surrounding remote viewing. He is not primarily a military UAP witness. His significance lies in how entertainment, laboratory research, intelligence curiosity, and celebrity combined to make alleged psychic functioning a global public issue.