Book excerpt: In 1979, Bob Jahn and Brenda Dunne, two individuals with vastly different backgrounds, experiences, and styles, and who had little in common beyond a shared vision, joined forces to create the unique scholarly enterprise that became the PEAR laboratory at Princeton University’s Engineering School. Over the next 28 years their “molecular bond,” with its associated complementarity, provided the foundation for a remarkable personal friendship and creative professional partnership. Just as it is only in the interaction of the constituent “atoms” in a physical molecule that the characteristics of the unified system become apparent, this book attempts to capture the magic, and the humor, of that dynamic bond through an assortment of vignettes that illustrate their shared voyage of discovery.