Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–93
TOMBRELLO: Yes. It took roughly two or three years for Koonin to reorganize things. Willy
was not threatened by it. Willy felt—I’m putting words in his mouth, because I saw the way it
was handled—that there would probably be no new appointments in nuclear astrophysics, but
that the people working in it, like Barnes and Kavanagh, could continue to work in it. That’s
actually a very good solution. Whereas Koonin then would take some of the new people I
hired—like professor of physics Robert McKeown—and they would go off in a different
direction. I think that has been reasonably successful, though Kellogg is down to maybe one
person now, it may just be [professor of physics Bradley] Filippone, because it’s not clear that
Bob McKeown is coming back from Jefferson Lab. It’s a high-energy electron accelerator in
Newport News, Virginia. He’s not the director of it, but he’s director of something, some piece
of it—maybe director of research or something. [Dr. McKeown is deputy director of science at
Jefferson Lab—ed.] Nuclear physics at Caltech used to have a lot of professors, and now it has
one. But then again, from then on, Kellogg didn’t have a big vision. When Koonin became
provost [1995], you know, they really lost the visionary. Bob’s a very fine physicist. So is
Filippone. But Koonin had a much bigger vision and played on a much bigger international
stage. Then he became provost and was playing on the stage for the entire institute.
ASPATURIAN: So we’re now up to about ’86 or so, and I think ’87 is when you went to
Schlumberger–Doll.
TOMBRELLO: Right.
ASPATURIAN: Let’s take a break..
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