The late Donald Katz starts the interview by briefly referring to his current projects but then describes his family background and his genealogical interests, stimulated by his 1952 trip to his father's birthplace in a German village. Katz went to a small country school in rural Michigan but was encouraged by a church minister to attend high school in a nearby town. After working in a machine shop, Katz entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and majored in chemical engineering. He put himself through college by hard effort; cleaning offices, restaurant work and some summers back in machine shops. As he continued into graduate studies, Donald Katz acted as George Brown's assistant, helping other graduate students and junior faculty, and with patent cases. He recalls courses, coworkers and faculty at Ann Arbor and gives three anecdotes illustrating the influence of surface chemistry, as taught by Floyd Bartell, at later stages of Katz's career. When Katz started his research career at Phillips Petroleum he was assigned to reservoir studies and he summarizes some of his activities during this period. An invitation by Brown brought Katz back to the University of Michigan and he details his early researches and consulting work. The war years altered some of his teaching and research responsibilities and led him, for instance, into heat transfer investigations. On Brown's promotion to Dean, Katz took over as departmental chairman for several years. During this part of the interview Donald Katz describes his involvement in the introduction of computer education into the chemical engineering curriculum, both at Ann Arbor and nationally. Other recollections follow: safety and the hazards of bulk chemicals; pipelines; the underground storage of gas and air; the origins of the Handbook of Natural Gas Engineering. Katz concludes his interview with some thoughts on the changes in the academic chemical engineering profession over his long career.