from Saturday's New York Times:.William Thaler, 79, Physicist on Secret
Project for the Navy, Dies
By JEREMY PEARCE
Dr. William J. Thaler, an experimental physicist of the Cold War era who
helped design an early electronic surveillance system for the Navy that was
used to monitor missile tests and satellite launchings worldwide, died on
June 5 at his home in Centreville, Va. He was 79.

The cause was complications after a stroke, his family said.

Dr. Thaler conducted most of his secret research for the military in the
1950's before spending the rest of his career at Georgetown University,
where he was chairman of the physics department from 1960 to 1976.

The surveillance system was code-named Teepee, derived from T. P., for
Thaler's Project. Dr. Thaler's design combined two branches of physics
research then under way. The first involved issuing high-frequency radio
signals to bounce between the Earth's surface and the ionosphere, part of
the upper atmosphere. The second branch was concerned with recording
disruption of the radio signals, called back-scatter, caused by rocket
launchings and nuclear tests.

Working at the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va., Dr. Thaler and
other scientists were able to pick up radio disruptions from nuclear tests
held in Nevada and were later successful in tracking a Polaris missile fired
from Cape Canaveral in 1957. The concept became known as over-the-horizon
radar.

Dr. Thaler's expertise was then used in the Navy's nuclear testing of the
hydrogen bomb and for Project Argus in 1958, which was intended to measure
the effects of radiation from three atomic bombs detonated in the upper
atmosphere.

In later work at Georgetown, Dr. Thaler became interested in the idea of
using lasers as tools of communication over short distances. In the late
1960's, he performed "groundbreaking work in laser communications, found new
techniques for creating laser energy and had many useful ideas for using
laser light," said Dr. Gerald M. Borsuk, superintendent of the Naval
Research Laboratory's Electronics, Science and Technology division in
Washington.

Dr. Borsuk, a former student of Dr. Thaler, added: "Laser science was in its
infancy. Dr. Thaler was aggressive in plunging into the field."

William John Thaler was born in Baltimore. He attended Loyola College and
earned his doctorate from Catholic University in 1952.

Dr. Thaler joined Georgetown in 1960, helped enlarge the physics faculty
and, as department chairman, created a low-energy nuclear physics facility
for experimentation. From 1976 to 1979, he took a leave to serve as chief
scientist and director of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, within
the Executive Office of the President, in the Ford and Carter
administrations.

He then returned to Georgetown and remained there until becoming a professor
emeritus in 1996. Dr. Thaler, who was a former Maryland state champion in
tennis doubles, also briefly helped coach the tennis team at Georgetown.

Dr. Thaler is survived by his wife of 54 years, Barbara; a daughter, Dr.
Alice Thaler of Thurmont, Md.; three sons, Gregory, of Herndon, Va.; Paul,
of Rixeyville, Va.; and Peter, of Gainesville, Va.; and nine grandchildren.