Earliest associations with science; high school, through 1904, undergraduate at Harvard University under Wallace C. Sabine, Benjamin O. Peirce, George W. Pierce, William E. Byerly, William Osgood, Julian Coolidge, Theodore Lyman, 1910; graduate education, early teaching experiences and research in x-ray spectroscopy with Edward V. Huntington, William Duane, Franklin Hunt; University of Michigan, summer 1917; lieutenant in Science and Research Division of U.S. Army Signal Corps under Robert A. Millikan; aircraft stability studies, experiences as a pilot, Civil Pilot Training Program, 1939. Teaching at MIT, 1919; chairman of Physics Department of Stanford University, 1920-1941, development of department, Paul Kirkpatrick, Felix Bloch, early experimental work in theory of the continuous x-ray spectrum with Perley A. Ross, controversy about data and resolution of it; invention of the klystron by the Varian brothers, his contribution with William W. Hansen to its development; Sperry Gyroscope's effect on department; civilian member of U.S. Signal Corps, early research involving rockets; return to Stanford after World War II, interest in teaching. Current research interests in solar wind and plasmas in the vicinity of the Earth. Influences on him of his early teachers, colleagues, writings of Henry Poincar,̌ Max Planck, Hendrik A. Lorentz. Avocations and present personal life. Also prominently mentioned are: Joseph A. Becker and Arthur Compton.