Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–111
it. It was clearly an idea whose time had come. When we told Harold Brown that we were
going to fund it, Harold basically said, “Well, of course. I’m glad you came to that conclusion,
because if you hadn’t, I would have anyway, because I like that proposal.” That showed a lot
about Harold. But John was very successful with that. In fact, the images you got were far
better than looking at the original manuscript. You could see all kinds of things. John was a
very, very interesting man. He had very severe arthritis and died just over twenty years ago, in a
fall in his house. One of the great losses to Caltech. He was a case where you could see how
someone in the humanities could benefit from being at an institute of technology. I always had
hoped there would be other people in the humanities who would find things where an appropriate
use of science would make their field stronger. So, that’s the first person I was thinking of. Do
you have somebody particular in mind?
ASPATURIAN: I’d like to come back to something you said yesterday, when you spoke about Bob
Bacher and Bob Sharp. Since they sort of encompass a lot of institute culture, let’s look at them.
TOMBRELLO: Very different personalities. They both did something big. Bob Bacher came here
in the late forties, a little after Lee DuBridge did. Funding was shifting from the big foundations,
like the Rockefeller Foundation funding Palomar, to the federal government. That was a big, big
change. Bacher and DuBridge changed the character of Caltech. People who think Caltech has
always been one sort of school are wrong. It has had many face changes—
ASPATURIAN: That’s a neat way to put it.
TOMBRELLO: The late 1940s were when we moved onto the stage of doing things that had
importance in Washington, and, as I think I’ve said before, in those days we also had the
gratitude of Washington, because the scientists’ contribution to the war effort had been
enormous. For whatever reason, keeping the groups of scientists together or rewarding them—
whatever it was—was extremely important, at least until about 1968. So Bacher built highenergy
physics and radio astronomy here, two fields that were important.
ASPATURIAN: What was Bacher like as a personality?
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