James E. Thornton (September 25, 1925, in Saint Paul, Minnesota – January 11, 2005)[1] was an American computer engineer.
Thornton studied electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota earning a bachelor's degree in 1950.
Immediately afterwards he went to Engineering Research Associates (ERA), which was acquired by Remington Rand in 1952.
In 1958 he left with other ERA engineers to form the new Control Data Corporation (CDC).
In 1994 he received the Eckert-Mauchly Award "for his pioneering work on high performance processors; for inventing the scoreboard for instruction issue; and for fundamental contributions to vector supercomputing.