In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews N. David Mermin, Horace White Professor of Physics Emeritus at Cornell University. Mermin recounts his childhood in New Haven and his undergraduate work at Harvard, where he worked with Andrew Gleason and did his senior thesis on the Jordan Curve Theorem. Mermin describes his thesis work with on superconductivity with Paul Martin and the turn of luck that led to his fellowship at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. He explains why his most formative physics education occurred during his time in Birmingham and describes many of his most important collaborations as a professor at Cornell. Mermin explains his delight in pursuing obscure areas of research in physics and why he is interested in the relationship between problems in quantum foundations and the nature of scientific knowledge. In the last portion of the interview, Mermin shares his view on the various categories that comprise scientific breakthrough.