Family background; father's education; early education and musical interest; Amherst College with graduate fellowship; graduate school at Harvard University; influence of Elmer Kohler's course on early research problems, bromination of ketones. Comments on staff, fellow students and influential faculty at Harvard (James B. Conant); teaching policies at Harvard. Postdoctoral work at Rockefeller Institute and Columbia University; wife's contribution to career; University of Minnesota position, comments on Charles Frederick Koelsch's work and on the facilities at Minnesota. Discussions of own work and works of Richard S. Berry, Robert Henry Rosenwald, Irving Pk̲el. Research funds at University of Minnesota, the importance of National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH); move to Harvard, lengthy comments on teaching, graduate students and faculty, as well as on other organic chemists (Christopher Ingolf, William Gould Young, Howard Lucas); status of physical organic chemistry and the future of chemistry.