Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–127
and all sorts of things. Cups, wine goblets, made out of lead. You start to wonder if you put an
acidic liquid into lead, what would be the effect? Pat brought this idea forward—just how were
the Romans affected by this? Was the decline of the Roman Empire partly due to lead
poisoning? That was Pat. Pat always looked beyond.
So he saw the big problem. He was a character [Sam Beech] in a Saul Bellow book
called The Dean’s December. He never admitted he was that character, but it was a pretty good
description. For reasons I never completely understood, Pat had refused to be a professor at
Caltech. Then, while Barclay Kamb was chairman of Geological and Planetary Sciences [1972-
83], he and I had a conversation. Of course, I always adored Barclay. I said, “You know, there’s
something wrong here. You really have to make Pat a professor.” And we argued. It wasn’t an
argument; it was a classic discussion with Barclay. You went around it. You went around it
again. You went around it in a different direction. Eventually at the end of it, he said, “You’re
right.” So he offered a professorship to Patterson, and Patterson turned it down again! Then,
later—this must have been the late 1980s—Wasserburg became chair [1987-89]. The truth of all
this—you know, what is truth? I am sure Patterson was a pain for Wasserburg to deal with. He
responded by being difficult with Pat. And Pat began to be very unhappy, because now he was
not protected. He was a senior research associate; he did not have tenure. He was not a
professor. Then Gerry, I guess, was pushed out, and Peter Goldreich [DuBridge Professor of
Astrophysics and Planetary Physics, emeritus] came as an interim chairman, and one of the big
things that Goldreich did was to offer a professorship to Patterson again, and this time Patterson
knew he had better accept it, because it was survival. That was a wonderful thing that happened
in that period: not only that it was offered but that, in this case, it was actually accepted. It made
the last years of Pat’s life more comfortable.
ASPATURIAN: And he was elected into the National Academy of Sciences [1987].
TOMBRELLO: That should have happened decades earlier, of course, because he’d done
something really big.
ASPATURIAN: Yes, he did. He changed the world for the better.
TOMBRELLO: But he was a wild man. Adorable human being. He was a really decent person.
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