Thomas Dale Akers is a former astronaut in the United States Space Shuttle program. He graduated from the University of Missouri–Rolla with B.S. and M.S. degrees in Applied Mathematics in 1973 and 1975, respectively. In 1979, he entered the Air Force, and was selected for the astronaut program in 1987. Akers is a veteran of four shuttle flights in which he spent over 800 hours in orbit, including more than 29 hours of extra-vehicular activity (EVA) experience. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Thomas Akers. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Akers
Wilcutt and Akers traveled on one space shuttle mission together, STS-79 Atlantis (September 16-26, 1996). www.crossandcrescent.com/2006/09/astronaut-to-math-teacher/