This interview was conducted as part of a series documenting the history of scientific work on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Robert Thomas discusses his education in physics at the University of Liverpool, and his entry into glaciology through the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey/British Antarctic Survey, and his subsequent education at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge under Charles Swithinbank. There is detailed information on his employment on the Ross Ice Shelf Geophysical and Glaciological Survey with Charles Bentley, and subsequent appointments at the University of Maine with Terry Hughes and George Denton, at Cambridge, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard. The interview also covers his subsequent work for NASA on radar and laser altimetry in Greenland and Antarctica (separate from the main research group focusing on ice stream behavior), and discussion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change process.