Wallace Thornhill (1942 to present) or Wal as he is known, graduated in Physics at Melbourne University in 1964 and began postgraduate studies with Prof. Victor Hopper’s upper atmosphere research group. Before entering university, he had been inspired by Immanuel Velikovsky through his controversial best-selling book, Worlds in Collision. Wal experienced first-hand the indifference and sometimes hostility toward a radical challenge to mainstream science. He realized there is no career for a heretic in academia.
Wal worked for 11 years with IBM Australia. The later years were spent in the prestigious IBM Systems Development Institute in Canberra, working on the first computer graphics system in Australia. He was the technical support for the computing facilities in the Research Schools at the Australian National University, which gave him excellent access to libraries and scientists there.