Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–130
Council of Advisors on Science and Technology] that President Obama has now. We got into a
discussion about that: How important is the Finland result? Because Finland always finishes
right near the top of any international list in the quality of high school, pre-college education.
The question is: Is any of what they’re doing applicable to the United States? Ahmed is very
much involved in that. He is one of those people who’s also an extremely good citizen in
addition to being a superb scientist. The Nobel Prize couldn’t have happened to a better
character. I remember being interviewed by the BBC in 1999, when he won the prize. I said,
“You know, he’s not like a chemist. He’s like a physicist. He builds his own stuff. He doesn’t
buy it.” And I said, “You have to think of this place [Caltech] as Hogwarts Academy. This is
our local magician, our Harry Potter.” They loved it, because at that point it was still totally
amazing that this young woman—this former welfare mom, J. K. Rowling—was going to be
richer than the Queen from selling those books. That’s another case where something good
happened to the right person.
ASPATURIAN: Shall we talk about your take, over fifty years, on Caltech’s presidents and
provosts?
TOMBRELLO: OK. Why don’t we start with my beginning, which was DuBridge. He was
president at the time I came here as just a postdoc—I don’t even know if DuBridge had a provost
before Bob Bacher. But certainly by 1962, Bacher was provost. This was a case of two people
who could work the two sides of the street, got on perfectly, and seemed to respect one another
absolutely. They both had done big things during the war. They both were capable of running
things. I believe this was a perfect case where Bacher was Mr. Inside, although he clearly had a
presence in Washington, and DuBridge was Mr. Outside, raising money for the institution. He
was doing things in Washington.
ASPATURIAN: Sounds like they were a dream team.
TOMBRELLO: They were a dream team in many, many ways. DuBridge had been in the job a
long time. Then in the fall of 1968, he got the offer to be science advisor to Richard Nixon.
Nixon’s politics were his politics. I remember standing in front of the fireplace during a party at
Tommy Lauritsen’s house, talking to him about it. This was an interesting case, because
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