Dr. Richard Upjohn Light (1902-1994) was the grandson of Dr. W.E. Upjohn, founder of the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company. He grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan and attended Culver Military Academy, Yale University, and the University of Michigan Medical School, where he earned his M.D. in 1928. Following this, he pursued a medical residency in neurosurgery in Boston before assuming the role of director at Yale's surgical laboratory from 1933 to 1935. In 1937, he became a member of the Board of Directors of the Upjohn Company in Kalamazoo. At the same time, he maintained his own medical practice in the area. Beyond this, Dr. Light was president of the American Geographical Society, chairman of the Board of Trustees at Kalamazoo College, and created the Richard U. Light Foundation.

Light first began flying, outside of a few lessons, in 1928. He signed up for the Army Flying School at March Field in California to learn how to fly, before finishing his training at Kelley Field in Texas. He flew occasionally in the following years, but in 1934, he flew around the world in a single engine seaplane with radio operator Robert Wilson. Stops were made in Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, continental Europe, the Middle East, West Indies, and the Philippines. The plane was disassembled, shipped across the Pacific Ocean, reassembled, and the two finished their flight with stops in California, Mexico, Cuba, and New York. The flight was detailed in a widely distributed book Journal of a Seaplane Cruise Around the World.

In 1937, Richard married Mary Upjohn Meader (1916-2008) in Maryland. The newlyweds embarked on a flight through South America and Africa, with Mary serving as the copilot, navigator, and photographer. While aerial photography was banned in many South American countries they visited, they took the earliest photographs of the Nazca Lines while over Peru. In Africa, they photographed Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, and the Egyptian pyramids, as well as other natural landscapes and urban areas. After the flight, they wrote the book Focus on Africa, published by the American Geographical Society.