From Herring's childhood and early education to his election as department head for the theoretical physics group at Bell Laboratories in 1956. Topics include graduate education at California Institute of Technology and Princeton University; Ph.D. in physics, 1937; early interest in astronomy, wartime work (hydrodynamics of explosions, underwater explosions). Much of the interview is devoted to brief discussions of individual publications; discussion of working environment at Bell Labs and experiences there from 1945 through the 1950s. Also prominently mentioned are: John Bardeen, Felix Bloch, Richard Milton Bozorth, Edward Uhler Condon, de Boer, Peter Josef William Debye, DeMarco, Dutton, William Fairbank, Enrico Fermi, Foner, Frobenius, Theodore Geballe, Gorkov, Gorteov, Holstein, William Vermillion Houston, Josef Jauch, Charles Kittel, Kunzler, Kunzter, Lev Davidovich Landau, Fritz London, Bernd T. Matthias, Robert Andrews Millikan, George Moore, Stanley Owen Morgan, Nichols, Obraztsov, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Gerald Leondus Pearson, Pitaevskii, Maurice Rice, Henry Norris Russell, Frederick Seitz, William Shockley, Shur, John Clarke Slater, Rado Suhl, Dave Thouless, Titeica, John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, Pierre Weiss, Gunther Wertheim, Eugene Paul Wigner, Witteborn, Dean E. Wooldridge, Fritz Zwicky; American Institute of Physics, Bell Telephone Laboratories Journal Club, Bell Telephone Laboratories Library, International Conference on Semiconductors, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Physics in Perspective, Reviews of Modern Physics, University of Kansas, University of Michigan Summer Symposium in Theoretical Physics.