Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

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