Wallace Thornhill  earned a degree in physics and electronics at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and began postgraduate studies. Before entering university he had been inspired by Immanuel Velikovsky's best-selling book,Worlds in Collision. The lack of curiosity in mainstream science convinced Thornhill to pursue an independent path outside academia.

In 1974, during the first international Velikovskian conference at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Mr. Thornhill met David Talbott and Velikovsky. On a subsequent visit to Velikovsky at his home in Princeton, NJ, Thornhill posed the key question raised by the theory of recent planetary catastrophe – what is the true nature of gravity? That question led to a re-examination of accepted ideas across many disciplines, culminating in the formulations of the "Electric Universe" hypothesis.

Thornhill has since written many papers for the U.S. journal, Aeon, and the SIS Review of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS), in England, and served as a council member of SIS.