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. In the following years Mankin returned to the Summer Institute for Space Physics as a teaching assistant and as Jack Herring’s research assistant where he learned computer programming and spent time doing “experimental mathematics.” Mankin went on to earn his PhD from John Hopkins working with John Strong, who was a classical spectrometist. At this time, Mankin focused his energies on balloon astronomy and infrared radiation from Venus, inventing the “Far Infrared Filters for Solar Observation” and working at the National Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas. After working with Strong, Mankin moved to the High Altitude Observatory (HAO) as a visiting scientist to work with Bob MacQueen and Jack Eddy on the Fourier Transform Spectrometer. Mankin talks about the ozone issue in the early 1970s; the discovery made by Paul Crutzer that won him a Nobel Prize and the Department of Transportation’s Climatic Impact Assessment Program (CIAP). Mankin concludes the interview by elaborating on his current work with the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS) and building a near infrared interferometer.

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