I started working as a beginning graduate student in Mike Tinkham’s lab in the summer of 1975. Even with my limited perspective, it was clear that the Tinkham lab was an extraordinary place. The range of research projects was very broad, with each student working on something very different from the other students. There were projects on point contacts exposed to far-infrared radiation, phaseslip centers in one-dimensional superconductors, niobium nitride, intercalated layered compounds, tunnel junctions, and in situ composites. This could have seemed like an assortment of disconnected topics, but it was not: Mike’s broad understanding and enthusiasm were contagious, making it possible, for example, to view the composites (which were being studied as a possible replacement for conventional multifilamentary composite magnet wire) as arrays of Josephson junctions. His weekly group seminars were an extraordinary opportunity to learn about a wide range of topics—they were an informal ongoing course in superconductivity. I was very fortunate to stay at Harvard after receiving my PhD, so I witnessed the exciting things that came from his group for many years. It is hard to single out specific topics, given how many exciting things were going on, but certainly the famous work on Andreev reflection should be mentioned. At time the work was done, Mike said that it was the last nail in the coffin, because he, Teun Klapwijk, and Greg Blonder had done so much; even Mike could not foresee how important the work would become years later when applied to the high-Tc superconductors. His group’s work on ultra-small tunnel junctions, and his effort to understand their behavior as macroscopic quantum phenomena, have also taken on renewed importance because of their connection to quantum computing. And, to mention a topic of special interest to me, the work on Josephsonjunction arrays provided important experiments in two-dimensional phase transitions. It still seems wonderful to me that one can study statistical mechanics by making integrated circuits which undergo phase transitions. I worked directly with Mike for 14 years, joining his group as a graduate student in 1975, and leaving Harvard as an associate professor in 1989. The opportunity to work with Mike for so long was one of the greatest experiences of my life. As a researcher, Mike’s rare combination of experimental and theoretical ability has kept him at the top of the field for decades. As a teacher, Mike worked constantly to make things understandable, and did so with enthusiasm and wit. Any success I’ve had since leaving his group is largely due to what I learned from him during those extraordinary 14 years.