Timothy Brown reminisces about his early fascination with astronomy, building telescopes and an observatory as a child with his father. Brown talks about his undergraduate school experience at Wesleyan University, a small liberal arts school in Middletown, Connecticut, and his work with the physicists on campus, specifically his mentor Jim Faller. Brown did his graduate studies at the University of Colorado, but completed most of his work in Tucson, working for a professor from the University of Arizona as an HAO (High Altitude Observatory) graduate student.

William Mankin begins by speaking about the origin of his “Physics of a Cup of Coffee” seminar and his relationship with Jack Herring of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, New York. After graduating from Southwestern (now called Rhodes College), Mankin received a scholarship to attend the Summer Institute in Space Physics offered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) where he learned about radiative transfer.