In my novel The Stone Loves the World, the character Vernon is based on my father, with some differences. For example, whereas Vernon worked at RAND from 1956-58, my father spent those years teaching undergraduate physics at his alma mater, Wake Forest College. Unlike Vernon, my father never worked in nuclear physics or nuclear bomb design. Like Vernon, he spent the bulk of his career analyzing the interaction of ultraviolet light with the Earth’s upper atmosphere. He published papers with titles such as, “Solar Extreme Ultraviolet Photon Flux Measurements in the Upper Atmosphere of August 1961,” and “Diurnal Variation of the Atmosphere around 190 Kilometers Derived from Solar Extreme Ultraviolet Absorption Measurements,” and “Solar Ultraviolet Irradiance at 40 Kilometers in the Stratosphere.” He was known for his talent for building the spectrometers to be used in his flights, and for his extreme meticulousness in calibrating them in the lab beforehand.