Burnaby Munson entered Tarleton State College in central Texas and transferred to the University of Texas in Austin, Texas; physical chemistry was his favorite subject. He studied the reactions of acetylene while in Robbin Anderson's lab and completed his PhD there as well. Munson's first job was with Humble Oil in Baytown, Texas, where he worked on solution thermodynamics, extracting paraffins from aromatics. Humble was collegial, and training continued with a lecture series organized by Joe Franklin, who was a good friend and mentor to Munson. Franklin's small group of high-profile scientists developed the field of ion chemistry in mass spectrometry (MS). When Franklin left Humble for Rice University, the ion chemistry group began to break up. Frank Field took his high-pressure instrument to New Jersey; Frederick Lampe went to Pennsylvania State University; and Munson took a position at the University of Delaware. Munson was recruited to use Delaware's two instruments, an old time of flight (TOF) and a new CEC 21-110. As a replacement for Joe Franklin and Frank Field, Munson attended his first American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) meeting, which he says was "a plum." He has since attended most of the American Society of Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) meetings, which subsumed ASTM, and he was president of the Society.