Biographical Information

Dr. Claus Horof, Director of ISETV

Dr. Claus Horof experienced an omen of things to come early in his life, when his own father was abducted by extraterrestrials while working on an archeological dig in southwestern New Mexico. The elder Dr. Horof was returned to his family after many days of grueling medical experiments, but the sudden impact that this event had on young Claus, then in high school, cannot be overstated. His family immediately moved to Manhattan in the hopes of putting the ordeal behind them, but Claus turned into a maverick at school, ignoring most of the standard assignments and delving heavily into his own research projects.

Dr. Horof’s brilliance nevertheless guided him through a Yale undergraduate program and earned him a doctorate at Princeton University. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1977, he eschewed the traditional tenure track positions available to him and resolved to do the right thing by joining the government’s Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program. He got off to a rocky start at SETI due to his unorthodox research strategy, which combined traditional scientific techniques with paranormal and supernatural investigative tools. Dr. Horof also found himself ideologically opposed to the actual, undisclosed mission of SETI, which is to devise methods of counteracting a perceived military threat from extraterrestrial beings, a threat which the President has officially classified as a clear and present danger to the security of the country.

After eight years of perpetual conflict with the SETI bureaucrats, Dr. Horof finally quit the program in 1985. He subsequently traveled throughout Latin America, eventually settling in Brazil, where he alternated his research between the Astronomy Department at the University of Sao Paulo and the mystical teachings from the shamans of the Yoruba tribe. Dr. Horof knew he belonged among the city slickers so, he moved back to New York City in 1991. He had learned that there could be no short cuts in his life’s work, and he was determined to found his own organization in order to pursue his own unique methods of research. Fortunately he met Dr. Arthur, a professor at New York University, and the two of them together founded ISETV in February of 1993. Unforgiven by the government after having publicly denounced the SETI program, Dr. Horof has struggled to maintain ISETV funding in the face of strong federal opposition and increasingly skeptical corporate investors.