Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–131
DuBridge interpreted the job offer, I thought, incorrectly, and being a brash young person, I told
him I thought he was interpreting it incorrectly. He said, “This is the Nixon administration’s
recognition of the things I’ve done in science.” I said, “Well, I think that’s true. But at the same
time you’ve got to figure out if you could work with this president. Your success will depend on
whether the president talks to you.” Because when presidents talk to their science advisors,
wonderful things happen, and when they don’t talk to the science advisor, nothing happens. And
in the case of DuBridge, Nixon didn’t in fact talk to him. There was a period, I think, when the
country really didn’t have a science advisor, after DuBridge sort of gave up on it.
But then an interesting thing occurred. We had to replace DuBridge. There was a search
committee—Bob Sharp ran it. Insiders have a hard time being promoted to president, just like
outsiders have a hard time being made division chairs or provost. You know every bad thing that
this presidential candidate has done. Some of them are not bad things, but they’ve made
enemies. Anybody who has been or done anything in the administration of a school has had to
make hard choices, and on one side of a hard choice is an unhappy person. You know where all
those bodies are buried if the person comes from, say, within Caltech. If they come from outside
Caltech, there are bodies at some other institution, but you don’t know about them, or not enough
about them. So Bacher was not likely to be considered seriously.
ASPATURIAN: Was he interested in the job?
TOMBRELLO: Hard to say. Probably, but I can’t prove that. The committee went through a
whole series of people. The only insider who had a chance was Bob Sharp himself, and I gather
his wife was not at all interested in that. Bob would have been a very interesting president.
They went through a list and got nowhere. Then one of the trustees—I don’t know which one—
said, “There’s this young guy in his early forties, secretary of the air force, named Harold Brown.
Give you a choice, you guys. You find somebody. We’ll look at them seriously. But you won’t
find anybody. It’s Harold Brown.” OK. Christy got very much involved at that point and
brought in a number of people. Presidents of other universities. Credible, credible scientists.
Guy Stever [Guyford Stever, then president of Carnegie Mellon]. James Fletcher—the NASA
administrator under Nixon. Both had been students here. William O. Baker, vice president for
research at Bell Labs.
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T