Family ancestry; childhood, education; interests and teachers in grammer and high schools; undergraduate teachers and courses at University of California, Berkeley; B.S., 1915; Lick Fellow, 1916-1917; influence of Campbell and Moore in spectroscopy interest, leading to Ph.D. thesis on the spectra of carbon stars; comments on Campbell, Tucker, Hubble, and Russell; marriage and children; note on teaching positions at Berkeley, serving on university committees; solar spectra work on Fabry-Perot interferometer, 1932; work with F. Spedding in separation of heavy water; contact with R. W. Wood; associates at Mt. Wilson Observatory, Edwin S. Hubble, Harlow Shapley, Walter Adams and Wilhelm Baade; administrator for Manhattan Project, details on project work, personnel, associations with E. O. Lawrence and J. R. Oppenheimer; description of Alamagordo explosion; director of Lick Observatory, 1945-58: comments on staff, staff projects, circumstances of Vasilevskis joining staff, recollections of William Wright, 20-inch telescope program, 150-inch telescope, relation to Berkeley Astronomy Dept., Lick-Mt. Wilson annual conferences, life on Mt. Hamilton; AURA and Kitt Peak Observatory Projet, 1950s; Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory Project; organizing IAU International Meeting at Berkeley; developing astronomy in New Zealand; comments on astronomical societies and organization, recent trends in astronomy, personal politics and sons' careers.