Thornton Leigh Page

Thornton Page was born in New Haven, CT on 13 August 1913 to Leigh Page, a physics instructor at Yale University, and Mary Page, trained as a nurse.[1] He went on to receive a B.S. in physics from Yale in 1934, and was named a Rhodes Scholar,[4] later earning a D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1938.[1]

During World War II, he served in the Pacific Theater with the minelaying operations research group, serving in Guan, Tinian, and at sea. He was in Tokyo for the Japanese surrender, and had reported on the atomic tests at Bikini.[1]

After his WWII service, Thornton Page served as a professor of astrophysics for the University of Chicago from 1946 until 1950.[5] He then worked for the U.S. Army's Operations Research Office (ORO) from 1951 until 1958.[5] In 1952, Thornton Page became the first editor of Journal of the Operations Research Society of America.[6] As an astronomer for the ORO, he became embroiled in the controversy involving Unidentified Flying Objects in 1953.[7]

In 1958, he became a professor and head of the astronomy department at Wesleyan University.[1] He resigned from Wesleyan in 1971 and began working for the United States Naval Research Laboratory until his retirement in 1976.[8] He was elected to the 2002 class of Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.[9]

In late 1961, he was seriously injured in an automobile accident where he broke several bones and lost sight in one eye.[8] He died in Houston on 2 January 1996.[8]

• Exclusive interview with member of CIA panel on UFOs, Open Minds
• Correspondence with Dr. Thornton Page, The Computer UFO Network, 27 October 1998