John Thomas 1926-2023

John Orion Thomas, who has died at the age of 96, was a Doctor of Physics and BBC Wales live reporter of the Apollo Moon Landings.

John Orion Thomas was born in 1926 in Sunny Bank, Grovesend, Wales to parents Maggie Evans and Thomas Evans Thomas. Aiming to escape the Welsh mining villages, he obtained a degree at Swansea University at the age of 17. This allowed him to gain a scholarship, and later become president of Swansea University where he studied for his Masters in Physics.  Always fascinated in music, he won the Eisteddfod Gadeiriol Myfyrwyr Cymru in 1945, playing violin, and again in 1953, with his choir’s interpretation of ‘Mawr yw Jehofa’.

During that time, his National Service took him to London, where he assisted in the development of Radar for the detection of military planes.

He returned to Swansea to complete his PhD in 1953, before moving to the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge, where he met his wife of nearly 70 years, Denise.  He was made a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College in 1959-63 where  tutored in Physics and continued his research into Radio and Remote Sensing.  Here he learned to fly Tiger Moth planes and received the Certificate of Proficiency by the Air Training Corps.

In 1963 the pair moved to Standford University, California, as visiting lecturer, before joining NASA’s Ames Research Centre as Assistant to the Chief Space Sciences.  It was here that he became fascinated with space science, atmospheric physics and the structure of the Ionosphere; 80-1000km up, the layer of the earth’s atmosphere which contains a high concentration of ions and electrons – and is able to reflect radio waves. His research in this area aided in the design and operation of Radar and Telecommunications still in use today.

Returning to the UK, he lectured at Imperial College from 1965 to 1986, and became editor of the Journal of Remote Sensing, Chairman and later President of the Remote Sensing Society. 

In 1969 due to his Welsh heritage and experience at NASA, he provided live coverage of the moon landings to a Welsh speaking audience for BBC Wales.

It was around this time that he set up his own computer software company. Building on his expertise in atmospheric science and remote sensing, among other things, he helped the Ministry of Defense devise techniques to track the movements of submarines from space, by detecting the waves on the surface of the oceans (a technique which has since been adopted to aid conservation by tracking the migrations of various species of Whales around the world).

John Orion Thomas died following a short illness in a nursing home in Abingdon, Oxfordshire where he had spent his last 3 years with his wife Denise.  He is preceded by brothers Hugh, Peris, Tyrell and survived by his sister, Margaret Evans, wife Denise Thomas, children Adrian, Martin, Allison, Julian and Julia and their 6 grandchildren.