Jens Thornton, or “Jim” (as he went by at Berkeley) was an electrical engineer employed by Stone & Webster engineering firm during the Manhattan Project.
Thornton emigrated from Norway in 1922 and worked at the Otis Elevator Company on Boston before securing a job at Stone & Webster. He was let go during the Depression, but re-hired in 1937. He served as the head of the Stone & Webster engineering team at the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley before transferring to the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee in the early 1940s.