Villars gives a brief account of his family life and early education with emphasis on teachers, academic work and interests, and describes: his studies at Wilmington College and at Ohio State University in the early 1920s, Ph.D. work in 1924 in photochemistry, postdoctoral studies at Harvard University, contacts with John Slater at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and with James Franck at Universitt̃ Gt̲tingen, and a year spent at Sumatra rubber plantations. He also discusses the administration of scientific research (industry vs. government), comments on the undertaking of a new research project, evaluates his own scientific contributions, and describes his personal life and interests.