Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
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<strong>Tombrello</strong>–89<br />
He’d done all kinds of things. He started in cosmic ray physics <strong>with</strong> Millikan or [H. Victor]<br />
Neher, probably both. He’d done theoretical work <strong>with</strong> Houston, the guy I mentioned earlier<br />
who went off to be the president of Rice. He had done all the nice stuff on the magnetic fields on<br />
the sun. He had gotten this photography mission on the approach to Mars [the Mariner<br />
missions]—these beautiful pictures of Mars as the spacecraft got closer and closer. I guess at<br />
that point he was designing these telescopes that are still the best millimeter and sub-millimeter<br />
dishes in the world, both in Owens Valley and on Mauna Kea. Leighton had done everything.<br />
This is the universal man, and he was a nice man, an extraordinary man. I hope his story is in the<br />
Archives—<br />
ASPATURIAN: It is. I did it.<br />
TOMBRELLO: —because it’s a wonderful story. Wonderful man. But he discovered that if you<br />
try to make a change, say in high-energy physics, you became very— He was a one-term chair,<br />
and it was not clear he wanted to be a one-term chair. I think he had stepped on some toes and—<br />
ASPATURIAN: What happened?<br />
TOMBRELLO: Well, they just looked for another chair.<br />
ASPATURIAN: You mean, he ran up against some difficulties?<br />
TOMBRELLO: Yes. And he didn’t give up easily. Bob was really very tough, and very smart.<br />
But, you know, you have to have the consent of the governed. It’s not that he was thrown out,<br />
but it was clear he should not try for another few years as chair. Anderson had been in eight or<br />
nine years. Bacher had been in from ’49 to ’62. Leighton was in five years. I was on the<br />
committee that picked Maarten Schmidt as the next chairman. Maarten tried something<br />
different, and I have to give him credit for trying. He tried to create a council of the senior<br />
people, and because at that point I was running Kellogg, I was on this thing. It was not the<br />
friendliest of operations, but later I understood what he was trying to do. He was trying to get<br />
the strong voices in a room to settle things among themselves, so that the faculty meetings—by<br />
then we were having real faculty meetings—would be more collegial. Of course, that is exactly<br />
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