 He received his undergraduate degree from Loyola College of Baltimore in 1947 and earned his master's degree in science at The Catholic University of America.He received his doctorate in physics at Catholic University in 1951.In 1958, Thaler was in charge of the ONR section of Operation Argus, a secret series of tests conducted over the Atlantic Ocean that looked at the effect of high-altitude detonations of nuclear weapons on radar and radio transmissions.