Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–134
ASPATURIAN: So Harold Brown was called to Washington [1977].
TOMBRELLO: I had predicted it. I tried to warn people that he was sitting out a Republican
administration and that he would disappear—
ASPATURIAN: Really?
TOMBRELLO: It was out on the street, and why people here didn’t react to it, I don’t know. But
he was gone, and they were left with Christy as acting president [1977-78]. Christy did an
interesting job, but not—he was never quite president. First, he was acting. Second, he didn’t
have the personality to be president. He’s a very solid person, but being president requires more
charisma. The Mr. Outside part didn’t exist for him, and Christy may not even have handled the
Mr. Inside part as well as he could have.
ASPATURIAN: I was going to ask, since we’re on him, how was he as provost, in your opinion?
TOMBRELLO: He was very good when Harold Brown was here. He and Harold were a good
team, an excellent team. It was when Brown left that— He was not a failure, it was just that we
marked time for about a year. And then we picked Goldberger.
ASPATURIAN: And how did that come about? He’s a very different choice.
TOMBRELLO: Yes. You might say with presidents, we tend to oscillate between academic types
and managerial types. So we had an academic type, we had a managerial type, then we had an
academic type. Murph had only been head of the Physics Department at Princeton, which is not
a big operation anyway. Murph was not a successful president. Many would say he was a failed
president.
ASPATURIAN: Do you know how he happened to be chosen?
TOMBRELLO: He was put up by the high-energy physicists, I think. I don’t know much about the
committee. Gell-Mann certainly was pushing him. Fred Zachariasen was pushing him. Again,
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T