James Thomas Dakin, known as Jim, was born May 23, 1945, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received a B.A. from Harvard College, cum laude, in 1967 and a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1971. He worked as a post-doctoral student at Stanford University, then briefly as an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts. In 1975 he began a 37-year career with General Electric, primarily in lighting technology. Since retiring from GE in 2012, he has worked as a consultant, and pursued a number of hobbies, including broader aspects of his lifelong passion --light.