 William J. Thaler

William J. Thaler, Ph.D. (December 4, 1925 – June 5, 2005) was an American experimental physicist.Working for the Office of Naval Research (ONR) at the Naval Research Laboratory in the 1950s, Thaler developed an early warning system to detect the launching of ballistic missiles using high frequency radio waves bounced between the Earth's surface and the ionosphere, part of the upper atmosphere.