AIP Oral Historian David Zierler interviews Richard Pastor, Chief of the Laboratory of Membrane Biophysics in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health. Dr. Pastor discusses his early life on Long Island, his graduate studies in biophysics at Syracuse University under Jerry Goodisman and Harvard under Martin Karplus, focusing especially on the work of the Karplus group on membrane biophysics. Pastor discusses his choice to work at NIH and the FDA rather than in the pharmaceutical industry. The interview concludes with a discussion of the relevance of Dr. Pastors work to current virology.