John Archibald Wheeler
Thorne rapidly excelled at academics early in life, winning recognition in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search as a senior at Logan High School. He received his B.S. degree from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1962, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1965 under the supervision of John Archibald Wheeler with a doctoral dissertation entitled "Geometrodynamics of Cylindrical Systems".