Peter Kai ThorntonCBE (April 8, 1925 – February 8, 2007) was a museum curator and writer.
The son of eminent scientist Sir (Henry) Gerard Thornton and Gerda, daughter of Kai Norregaard, of Copenhagen (and related to the actress, director and writer Eva Le Gallienne through the latter's Danish mother, journalist Julie Norregaard),[1][2] Thornton was educated at Bryanston, which he left aged 14 to enroll at the de Havilland aeronautical technical school and work on the Mosquito production line at Hatfield, Hertfordshire; after serving during World War II in the Intelligence Corps, he went up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he read Danish and German (B.A. 1950).[3][4][5]