In this interview conducted as part of a series with SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Uwe Bergmann recalls his life and career in spectroscopy. Bergmann discusses his early life and education in West Germany and his move to the United States to pursue a PhD at Stony Brook University and the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. He describes his early work on synchrotron-based Mӧssbauer spectroscopy and love of instrument-building, and his subsequent work as a post-doc at the then-new synchrotron at Grenoble, France. Bergmann goes on to describe his career as a staff scientist at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource at SLAC, with a significant digression on his work imaging artifacts with the SSRL facilities, including the Archimedes Palimpsest and Archaeopteryx fossils. Finally, he discusses his time as an administrator at SLAC, first as Deputy Director then Interim Director of the Linac Coherent Light Source.
