This book is not only an autobiography of the respected physicist and director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, but a discussion and analysis of issues critical to the relationship between independent academic inquiry and imposed government orthodoxy. The book describes each phase of Dr. Panofsky's career in a way that clarifies the nature of the issues surrounding his work, and explains his chosen course of action.

Wolfgang K.H. 'Pief' Panofsky, a German-American physicist received his bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1938 and obtained his PhD from Caltech in 1942. In the years 1945-1951, Panofsky held an assistant professorship at Berkeley, before permanently establishing himself as a Professor of Physics at Stanford. Between 1961 and 1984, he was the director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.