Thüring studied mathematics, physics, and astronomy at the University of Munich and received his doctorate in 1928, under Alexander Wilkens and Arnold Sommerfeld. Thüring completed his Habilitation there in 1935, whereupon he became an Observator at the Munich Observatory.
Wilkens was professor of astronomy and director of the Munich Observatory, which was part of the University. From 1928 to 1933, he was an assistant at the Munich Observatory. From 1934 to 1935, he was an assistant to Heinrich Vogt at the University of Heidelberg.
In 1937, he became a lecturer (Dozent) at the University of Munich.
From 1940 to 1945, he held the chair for astronomy at the University of Vienna and was director of its observatory. After 1945, he lived as a private scholar in Karlsruhe.
During the reign of Adolf Hitler, Thüring was a proponent of Deutsche Physik, as were the two Nobel Prize–winning physicists Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard. Deutsche Physik, was anti-Semitic and had a bias against theoretical physics, especially including quantum mechanics.
He was also a student of the philosophy of Hugo Dingler.
Sturmabteilung.
