Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–132
In those days, candidates for president were on public view. They came and gave talks to
the faculty. I remember Harold Brown coming to talk to Kellogg. We were down in the tandem
accelerator control room. And Willy [Fowler] proceeds to try to lecture this guy. Whereupon,
Brown really took control of the meeting and told Willy the way it was going to be. Very
impressive. Extremely impressive. This was during the Vietnam War. This was a secretary of
the air force. He had been director of Livermore when he was in his thirties. In some sense, he
was a protégé of Edward Teller. Oh, my! He was identified with the military, the government—
and with Edward Teller! Even in those days, especially in those days, physics was very much
influenced by the old Oppenheimer–Teller thing—which side are you on? Look, Brown had
been too young to be involved in any of that. But this was Oppenheimer country, and he was
clearly identified with Teller. He may not have won our hearts, but he won our votes. It was one
of the last times presidential candidates came and talked and got questioned. Really questioned.
So Brown was an interesting choice, and he came here.
DuBridge, I thought, had been a wonderful president. But he’d been in a long time, and
toward the end of his term the bureaucracy had gotten Byzantine. It was not effective. There
was too much of it. Harold Brown almost immediately, using the Sylmar earthquake [1971] and
the damage to Throop Hall as a bit of an excuse, trimmed it and made the place tighter, better
run, more efficient. Was he a visionary? No. If I had to grade the Caltech presidents I’d
known—I did that once as an exercise—both DuBridge and Brown get an A. DuBridge because
of vision. Clear accomplishment. Respect of the faculty. Respect of everybody, including the
government. Brown was different. He was not the scientists’ scientist. But he managed the
place beautifully. He was easy to communicate with. DuBridge didn’t get around. Brown did.
I can remember once—I was still a junior faculty member, an associate professor without
tenure—looking up from what I was doing and there standing in my office door—this was after
Bacher had stepped down and Christy was provost—are Brown and Christy, who have pounced
on me. They were pouncing on a lot of other people, I gather—just making these on-the-spot
visits. Let’s go see what so-and-so is doing and talk to them. Question them. It was very
interesting. As I think I’ve said, Brown could tell you yes or no, and if it was no, forget it. If it
was yes, the check was in the mail. He was a very interesting man. In some ways, he was my
president at Caltech. Did he and Christy make mistakes? Everybody makes mistakes. I think
one of the things that was a mistake—because they didn’t think it out clearly—was the social
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