Monica Ince Hughes, the daughter of Phyllis (Fry) and Edward Lindsay Ince, was born in Liverpool, England, on November 3, 1925. Before she was a year old, her father became head of the Mathematics Department at the University of Cairo, so the family moved to Egypt. When Monica and her sister reached school age, the Inces returned to London, and the girls were enrolled in the Notting Hill and Ealing High School, a private girls' school whose students were taken on frequent field trips to the British Museum, where Monica became fascinated by the development of language and the resulting power of storytellers over their audience.

Equally enthralling to the young girl were the books and stellar observations she shared with her father, an avid amateur astronomer. Her mother's accounts of the 1910 appearance of Halley's Comet increased Monica's interest in astronomy and helped to develop her...