The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/R. S. Hawke.md

aliases	category	tags	summary	location	relations	created	updated
R. S. Hawke Ronald S. Hawke Ronald Hawke Ron Hawke Dr. Hawke	Scientists & Researchers	Person Physicist Engineer LawrenceLivermore Psychokinesis UriGeller AcousticEmission Railgun Stargate GrillFlame	Livermore electronics engineer who tested Uri Geller on magnetic program cards in 1974, built an acoustic emission experiment for metal bending, and was visited in 1979 by the Army's Grill Flame committee.	Livermore, California	type with role fn employed_by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory research physicist, Engineering Research Division, Electronics Engineering Department 1 type with start role fn investigated Uri Geller 1974 invited Geller to Livermore in 1974 to alter magnetic program cards; wrote 'Magnetic Pattern Erasure' 3 type with start role fn investigated Psychokinesis 1978 acoustic emission experiments with two subjects reputed to bend metal paranormally, outlined January 11, 1979 7 type with start end role fn subject_of Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee 1979 1979-12 laboratory visited by committee members; Annex 7 of the December 1979 report evaluates his experiments 11	2026-09-22	2026-10-05

Ronald S. Hawke, who signed his technical writing "R. S. Hawke," was a research physicist in the Engineering Research Division of the Electronics Engineering Department at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (then Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, University of California) in the 1970s.¹ His published and patented work at the laboratory concerned electromagnetic railguns and hypervelocity launchers: the May 8, 1979 preprint UCRL-82677, "Magnetic Propulsion Railguns: Their Design and Capabilities," written with Jonathan K. Scudder for the Second International Conference on Megagauss Magnetic Field Generation, concluded that projectiles could be accelerated to more than 20 kilometers per second; a July 1979 companion paper (UCRL-82296) examined railgun impactors for generating pressures of 1 to 10 terapascals; and United States Patent 4,343,223, "Multiple stage railgun," was filed May 23, 1980 by Hawke, Scudder and Kristian Aaland and issued August 10, 1982.¹² The laboratory's report series carries his name on railgun and plasma armature papers through 1991, among them "Results of Railgun Experiments" (UCRL-88703, 1983, with Los Alamos authors) and a 1991 progress report on a transition armature technology project.²

Geller at Livermore, 1974

In his 1976 anthology The Geller Papers, Charles Panati wrote that during one of his West Coast trips Uri Geller visited "Ronald Hawke, an engineer working at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory" in late 1974, and that "no formal testing with Geller was undertaken," although Hawke and his colleagues "did observe events in their laboratory that they feel call for further scientific investigation."³ Panati's account of Hawke's contribution, titled "Magnetic Pattern Erasure: A Proposed Method of Scientific Study," says the targets were four computer cards carrying magnetic programs under a plastic coating, and that Geller's goal was to alter or erase them. Twice he failed, once when a card was sealed in a glass bottle and once when he was not allowed to touch a card. Two other cards were handed to him and he rubbed his fingers across their surfaces; Hawke stated that rubbing alone cannot alter the magnetic programs, yet when the cards were fed to a computer they were rejected as "ambiguous," and Hawke wrote that "subsequent inspection with a magnetic viewer after the meeting with Geller revealed that the magnetic patterns had been altered."³

Geller's own account (1986, with Guy Lyon Playfair) names Hawke as "the physicist who invited me there," says Hawke "had published several articles in his highly specialized fields," and describes two successes in four attempts, the cards being "fed into a Hewlett Packard 65 calculator" and rejected by it although accepted before he touched them. Geller thanked "Ron Hawke and family" in the book's acknowledgements and listed Hawke among the 1974 investigators "all of whom produced positive reports."⁴

A CIA staff report released in 2014, filed with a Reuters item of November 4, 1974 about a Geller prediction of war in the Middle East, records a telephone call received "on 23 October" from a "Security Officer" of the Atomic Energy Commission at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, who said "they had just spent two days in the laboratory testing Geller." The document states that forty AEC scientists took part in a month-long program designing the experiments, that the equipment cost $20,069, that Geller showed "unequivical evidence" of paranormal ability under conditions the Livermore project team "certified" fraud and cheat-proof, and that he was monitored by four kinds of magnetometers, neutron counters, active and passive infrared, low-light video and motion picture film, in part covertly. It also records that "predetermined portions of HP" program cards were erased, that a second series was planned at Livermore for the second week of December, and that arrangements had been made for testing at NASA Ames Research Center (Moffett Field). The writer adds that the information "was received anecdotally" from a security officer who had not been one of the experimenters. The document names neither Hawke nor the security officer. Other paragraphs of the same report concern "LSD personnel" and a career development course for "LSD."⁵

Annie Jacobsen's Phenomena (2017) describes classified Psychokinesis tests of Geller by Livermore scientists in the winter of 1975, with high-quality lasers and magnetic computer program cards, and attributes to Hawke the written result "The magnetic pattern stored in the iron oxide layer of a magnetic program card was erased."⁶

Acoustic emission experiments, 1978 to 1979

Hawke's later work with metal-bending subjects is documented in a paper titled "Outline of Acoustic Emission Experiments Performed with a Person Reputed to Have Paranormal Metal Bending Abilities," dated January 11, 1979 and stamped "In Strict Confidence." Its cover letter, on Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Electronics Engineering Department letterhead (reference WT 79-0027A), was addressed to an office designated DT-1A at 1735 North Lynn Street in Arlington, Virginia, and said the outline was the one "you requested during our meeting on December 4, 1978." Copies went to A. E. Brown, H. C. McDonald, E. K. Miller, A. J. Poggio and C. A. Tatro, and the outline's reference note thanked A. E. Brown and C. A. Tatro for help with design, implementation and interpretation.⁷

The outline gives the reasoning for the method. Acoustic emission responds to "a single intragranular or intergranular fracture or grain boundary slip," its "high sensitivity requires non-contact, hence decreases possibility of deception," and the signals "are very distinct from all forms of touching, rubbing and other noise." The sensor was a lead zirconate titanate element resonant at 140 kilohertz, epoxied to the bowl of a standard stainless steel spoon clamped in a vise; other instruments included a logic probe recording electric field on the spoon, an air-core coil for magnetic field, an AM radio tuned to 1600 kilohertz, a video recorder that stored the acoustic signal on the video channel, and a helium-neon laser reflected from the underside of the spoon bowl onto a target to register any bending. Sessions lasted about an hour with the subject and two or three observers present; the subject was told that touching the spoon spoiled the record.⁷

Results: during one session, with one subject, "at least 4 clear instances of A.E. events occurred" while the spoon and vise were untouched, typical of single-grain or grain-boundary fracture; "no anomalous A.E. events were recorded during dry runs"; no elastic or plastic deformation large enough to shift the laser beam was observed; "fewer but similar results were obtained with one other subject." The abstract said the results were "consistent with those of Crussard" (C. Crussard and J. Bouvaist, Mémoires Scientifiques Revue de Métallurgie, February 1978) and that "further experiments are warranted."⁷ The Stargate collection holds the same outline in several copies; the abstract in the copy filed under CIA-RDP96-00787R000200130003-5 reads "no significant bending was observed," where the copy filed under CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100001-9 reads "large amounts of bending were not observed."⁷⁸

A routing note in the same file, unsigned, reads: "This piece may offer us excellent opportunity to bring in some other (than SRI) minds to work the problem. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the scientist, Hawke, might have manipulated the data/experiment. Might be a good idea to invite him to brief his work to the Science Monitoring Team when they visit California in late July 79."⁹ The file also contains a Hawke envelope addressed to Major Bill Stoner at DAMI 2E453 in the Pentagon (the Army's Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence) and an Army routing slip forwarding a visit request form that was "retained on file in DAMI-RMA."¹⁰

Grill Flame visit and the Department of Energy briefing, 1979

The Army's Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee, chaired by Manfred Gale, listed Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and "Dr. Hawke" among the places and individuals contacted in the autumn of 1979 (Annex 2). Its December 1979 report states that "Committee members who visited Dr. Hawke's laboratory were very impressed by the scientific approach used in his investigations," and that his experiments were "considerably more valuable than PK effects on random number generators." Annex 7 records that "highly specific physical phenomena are recovered by instruments while PK 'intent' is being 'exerted' by a Subject," with control experiments performed and no mechanisms adduced; "Hawke's experiments are the most objective and scientific of the investigations we have reviewed... vastly more valuable than the PK effects on random number generators." The annex adds: "A means exists for conduct of these experiments on a compartmentalized basis: Since the experiments utilize measuring equipment commonly used in weapons development, 'cover' and access restrictions are relatively straightforward," proposing as an example that Naval Weapons Center, China Lake, which "is just now initiating development of contact fuzing utilizing... acoustic emission of materials transitioning the plastic deformation regime," could host "a small development project on 'AE applications to guided missile fuzing'" that "would provide easily administered and controlled PK experiments by Hawke." Elsewhere in the report, the committee's discussion of the Army MICOM random-number experiment says that an experiment using "the modification of the physical aspect of a structure" might be more convincing, and that "the acoustic emission experiment by Hawke might be an example of an attempt to do this."¹¹¹²

On November 28, 1979, Hawke met Dr. Ruth M. Davis, Assistant for Research Applications at the Department of Energy, and Dr. W. LaBerge of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. In a letter of December 26, 1979 (EMS79-0117) he wrote that, after talking to the laboratory's acoustic emission, metallurgy and ceramics staff, "the equivalent of 5-7 full employees would be the optimum," with tasks distributed "among 10-15 researchers, technicians and other consultants and advisors," enough in a one-year program "to obtain reliable data or nearly exhaust the possibility of obtaining such data." He had sounded out Henry McDonald (Associate Director for Engineering) and Dale Nielsen (Associate Director for Administration), who said "such types of multidisciplinary and discrete research are within the capability of LLL," and reported that director Roger Batzel "has been informed that such a project might be suggested by DOE and/or DOD"; Batzel was named as the person to contact. Copies went to Batzel, McDonald, Nielsen and LaBerge.¹³

After 1979

After the December 1979 letter, the laboratory's published record under Hawke's name consists of the railgun and launcher papers listed above.²

Accounts of a Livermore group that experienced apparitions after its Geller sessions come from Jim Schnabel, who gives the physicists the pseudonyms Peter Crane, Mike Russo and Don Curtis; Schnabel's account does not name Hawke.¹⁴

Footnotes

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1. R. S. Hawke, "Outline of Acoustic Emission Experiments Performed with a Person Reputed to Have Paranormal Metal Bending Abilities," January 11, 1979, cover letter signed "R. S. Hawke, Engineering Research Division, Electronics Engineering Department," CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100001-9 (archive.org mirror of the CIA STARGATE collection, https://archive.org/download/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100001-9/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100001-9_djvu.txt) and CIA-RDP96-00787R000500110001-6. ↩︎

2. R. S. Hawke and J. K. Scudder, "Magnetic Propulsion Railguns: Their Design and Capabilities," UCRL-82677, May 8, 1979, https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6255454; Hawke and Scudder, "Prospects for Generating 1-10 TPa Pressures with a Railgun," UCRL-82296, July 13, 1979, https://www.osti.gov/biblio/5974977; Hawke, Brooks, Fowler and Peterson, "Results of Railgun Experiments," UCRL-88703, 1983, https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6263329; Hawke, "Transition Armature Technology Project, Progress Report No. 1, June 1-July 31, 1991," UCRL-ID-114847, https://www.osti.gov/biblio/10107228; U.S. Patent 4,343,223, "Multiple stage railgun," inventors Ronald S. Hawke, Jonathan K. Scudder and Kristian Aaland, https://patents.google.com/patent/US4343223A/en. ↩︎

3. Charles Panati, ed., The Geller Papers: Scientific Observations on the Paranormal Powers of Uri Geller (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), introduction, as reproduced at https://urigeller.com/scientific-paranormal/the-geller-papers/introduction/. ↩︎

4. Uri Geller and Guy Lyon Playfair, The Geller Effect (London: Jonathan Cape, 1986), chapters on 1974 investigators and on computers; acknowledgements; index entry "Hawke, Ronald S." http://www.mbdodd.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/1/6/14162844/the_geller_effect_-_uri_geller_and_guy_lyon_playfair.pdf. ↩︎

5. CIA document CIA-RDP79-00999A000200010023-0, "Declassified in Part, Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2014/01/09," archive.org item cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp79-00999a000200010023-0, https://archive.org/download/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp79-00999a000200010023-0/cia-rdp79-00999a000200010023-0_djvu.txt. The writer and the caller are not named. ↩︎

6. Annie Jacobsen, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis (Little, Brown, 2017), p. 179. Hawke's own wording in The Geller Papers differs (note 3). ↩︎

7. Hawke, outline of January 11, 1979, as in note 1; cover letter, reference WT 79-0027A. ↩︎

8. Hawke outline, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200130003-5, https://archive.org/download/CIA-RDP96-00787R000200130003-5/CIA-RDP96-00787R000200130003-5_djvu.txt. ↩︎

9. Unsigned note, "101-06 Lawrence Livermore Lab. Metal Bending - R.S. Hawke," CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100002-8, https://archive.org/download/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100002-8/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100002-8_djvu.txt. ↩︎

10. Envelope addressed to Maj. Bill Stoner, DAMI 2E453, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100005-5; Army routing slip, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100008-2. ↩︎

11. Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee, December 1979, Manfred Gale, chairman, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5, Chapter 2 paragraph 4b, Annex 2 (places visited, p. 43) and Annex 7 (pp. 66-67). https://archive.org/download/CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5/CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5_djvu.txt. ↩︎

12. Same report, critique of the Army MICOM random-number experiment. ↩︎

13. R. S. Hawke to Dr. Ruth M. Davis, December 26, 1979, EMS79-0117, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100003-7, https://archive.org/download/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100003-7/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100003-7_djvu.txt. ↩︎

14. Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies (Dell, 1997), as excerpted in Rudy Havenstein, "Dr. Green and the Goblins of Langley," July 11, 2025, https://rudy.substack.com/p/dr-green-and-the-goblins-of-langley. ↩︎