Early life in Mexico; Civil Engineering school, 1938, physics in Mexico; University of Mexico; study group; visitors from the United States, 1941; McDonald and Yerkes Observatories, 1942; work with Otto Struve; modern physics at University of Mexico; contact with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar; Solomon Lefshetz's influence on mathematics in Mexico; Yerkes courses and general atmosphere after 1944; Struve's administration; work with Chandrasekhar; postdoctoral work in Mexico; return to Yerkes, staff reorganization; research at Yerkes, including radiative transfer, stellar envelopes, and Jupiter (Gerhard Herzberg); Mt. Wilson and work there; Caltech position; general research in 1950s and 1960s; limitations of present day research; teaching at Caltech; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); decision to accept position in Germany; Caltech and Carnegie Institute of Technology; role of Kitt Peak Observatory in Federal Funding for Astronomy; reflections on past work. Also prominently mentioned are: Camilo Arguello, Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade, Jesse Leonard Greenstein, Robert Hutchins, Gerard Peter Kuiper, William Wilson Morgan, Luis M nch, Satero Prieto, Olin Chaddock Wilson; Hale Observatories, and Tonantzintla Observatory.