PHP & Javascript??? HOW TO

Hello eveybody!

I am relatively new to PHP and I have no knowledge of Javascript, but I think Javascript might be what I need
for a problem I have.
Well, say you have a PHP page with a form and the forms send a query in the Mysql database,
for example "SELECT name FROM employers WHERE salary > 5000";
The user is then presented with a page containing all the names from the query (this I have done).
What I also want to have is to give the user the ability to click on every person's name and see exactly the amount of salary he gets.
I thought of making an extra php script that would take the person's name as input (when the user clicked on the name) and then show the salary.
But I want to use pop-up window for this job, so I think Javascript is best for that...
Any hints on how to start? Basically I need some hints on how to get something fro a page and give it as input to Javasript to do the rest of the job...