Professor Charles Carter received his BA in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University (1967). He performed PhD research under Joseph Kraut at UCSD (1967–1972) and postdoctoral work under Aaron Klug at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK (1973–1974). His publications use diverse biophysical techniques to unite enzymology (studies of combinatorial mutagenesis to investigate long-range coupling of domain motion to catalysis) with the structural and functional evolution of the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (AARSs), their cognate tRNAs, and their role in the origin of genetic coding. His interests led him to examine fundamental rhymes between Biology and Physics. He was a member of the American Institute of Physics Board of Directors 2012–2016 and has continued since then to serve in an advisory capacity to AIP Publishing.