Charles Brian Nelson was born in 1938 in Memphis, Tennessee. He received his first degree in Industrial Design at Tennessee Tech. After he graduated from college in 1960, he went to work with the Depot Company where his job was making Titanium Dioxide. Charles stayed at this job for about 5 years, and by encouragement from his friends, he moved to Huntsville to work at NASA. He started out working at a test lab where they were responsible for getting the test bird into the test stand to test it. This job also included testing of vibrations, engine fire, and testing every individual part. After this job, Charles moved into the human factors engineering group. He worked for NASA for about 12 years.