John Walter "Sonny" Christopher, a pioneer in the field of Human Factors in the aerospace industry, was born in Bybee, Kentucky in 1910, and died in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1984. He graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1936 with a degree in Psychology. He enlisted in the United States Navy in 1942, was commissioned while in boot camp, and directed training in electronics and radar systems as Electronics Instructions Officer at the Navy EE&RM School in Gulfport, Mississippi.

After the war, he was a Research Psychologist at the University of Kentucky before entering the Human Factors field in aerospace manufacturing. He worked on many major space and defense programs from the 1950's to the 1980's, including the F-8 Crusader fighter, the Regulus cruise missile, the Atlas missile, the Apollo program, the Saturn IB, the Space Shuttle, the F-16 fighter, the M-1 tank, the LCAC, and the MX missile.

In the late 1950's at North American Aviation in Downey, California he developed the concept of training astronauts underwater to simulate the weightless conditions of outer space. All United States astronauts from the Apollo program onward have trained in huge water tanks at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Christopher also worked in the energy field, including redesigning Nuclear Generator Control Room Displays for the Tennessee Valley Authority, developing a revolutionary process for low-temperature fractionation of coal in the 1940's, and in the 1980's conceiving an innovative approach to the production and use of ethanol to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

In Columbus, Ohio in the early 1950's he created the "ray gun" used by actor Cliff Robertson in the early CBS science fiction TV series "Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers." Christopher was the author of a number of books, held several patents, and was a licensed psychologist in the State of Louisiana.

He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sigma Xi, and was an Associate Fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, chairing the New Orleans section.

He and his wife of 37 years Jane Crane Christopher had six children, and their sons James Michael and Irvin Walter both served in the United States Navy.

His brother Irvin Wallace Christopher was a P-51 Mustang pilot in the Army Air Corps in World War II.