Dr. Thacker received his M.S. (1967) and Ph.D (1971) degrees in Physics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his B.S. (1965) in Applied Mathematics from Georgia Institute of Technology. After postdoctoral work at University of Chicago's Department of Geophysical Sciences and the National Center for Atmospheric Research he came to AOML in 1972 as a National Research Council Resident Research Associate and was retained by AOML as a research scientist in 1974.

His interests include numerical modelling and data assimilation as well as statistical analysis of data and statistical forecasting. His work with irregularly spaced computational meshes for storm-surge forecast modelling was recognized with the Senior U.S. Scientist Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung in 1983. He is also known for his contributions to the "adjoint method" for fitting numerical models to data. His recent work has focused on statistical methods for describing and predicting climatological fields, and he is currently exploring the possibility of estimating subsurface salinity using measurements of surface salinity and subsurface temperature.