"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."
-William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
"Am I...dead? Is that what you...done to me?"
-James Howlett, Weapon X, Chapter 11
BEGINNINGS
The Weapon X Program began with one man. Certainly it only succeeded through the corrupt convergence of evil power brokers and masterminds as varied as Mister Sinister, Lord Darkwind, Romulus and perhaps even Apocalypse, but it began with the twisted desires of one man, called the Professor.
Truett Hudson was the firstborn child of Frederick MacDonald Hudson II, the bastard son of a bastard son. Not much is known about Truett's childhood, although speculation comes easy. As it is known that Frederick Hudson fathered two more sons by two more women before dying in a bar fight before turning 40, it can be assumed Frederick had little direct influence on his son growing up. By adulthood, Truett had abandoned his given name and instead went by the name Thorton. Intelligent but socially awkward, Thorton had little use for other people and devoted his time to studying instead.
During World War II, Thorton was assigned as a civilian consultant to the Army when they liberated the concentration camps of Germany. His task was to inventory and evaluate the research left behind by Nazi scientists who had been using the Jews and other prisoners as guinea pigs for their experiments. Thorton had the perfect temperament for the assignment, and could easily have found himself assisting the Nazis in their grisly work if given the chance. His servicemen escorts sensed the unpleasantness behind Thorton's glasses and, for his imperious attitude, nicknamed him "The Professor."
On one assignment, Thorton uncovered the hidden laboratories of Nathaniel Essex, the post-human geneticist also known as Mister Sinister, who used the concentration camps as the perfect backdrop for his own experiments. In the inventory, Thorton pocketed some of Essex's scientific journals. These journals gave him insight into the mind of a madman, but more significantly helped put the Professor ahead of the curve when it came to genetic theory, and evolution... and the existence of mutants.
After the success of Abraham Erskein's Project: Rebirth, a cabal of scientists, private and government backers saw the value in continuing the super-soldier experiments. Retroactively adopting Captain America's program into their endeavor as "Weapon I," the cabal became known as the Weapon Plus Program. During the research that followed after World War II, the Professor became a part of Weapon Plus. His expansion on Essex's original notes proved invaluable to the program, but for a number of years he only served as a small cog in the machine. 
Eventually, however, the Professor's patience and service paid off. He was given the lead on the latest of the Weapon Plus projects, the tenth iteration known as...
...Weapon X.