William P. Murden grew up and was educated in Virginia. Graduating from the College of William and Mary in 1941, he served with the U.S. Army Air Force in World War II in Central Africa and the Caribbean, afterword earning two engineering degrees at Virginia Tech. He performed research in analytical mechanics in Texas, and military operations analysis in Virginia, California, Hawaii, and Washington, DC. He joined McDonnell Aircraft Company, in St. Louis, Missouri, as Manager, Operations Analysis.? He retired in 1985 as Director, Engineering Technology for McDonnell Aircraft Company, a division of McDonnell Douglas. ?Intrigued by the discipline of retrograde chess analysis since the 1979 publication of Raymond Smullyan's first book in that field, he generated many of his own problems, pursuing an across-the-board understanding that led to him authoring this book.