Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
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<strong>Tombrello</strong>–146<br />
silently applauded and gave me a better budget. But I had to prove it. I had to prove I could do<br />
it. There wouldn’t be any outcry. There wouldn’t be any obvious financial irregularities. You<br />
have to put an underline under obvious. It worked. So working <strong>with</strong> him was a lot of fun.<br />
Never perfect, but very, very good, because we’d known one another a long time. We knew<br />
where we were coming from. It worked very, very, very, very well. And worked to the benefit<br />
of the division. We started the Thirty Meter Telescope project, the two of us, and brought the<br />
astronomers in.<br />
ASPATURIAN: I’m going to ask you to hold on that until we get to your years as PMA chair. But<br />
at the time Koonin became provost, you were still dealing <strong>with</strong>, was it, the staffing committee for<br />
physics?<br />
TOMBRELLO: Oh, yes, I had the staffing committee, except for that break at Schlumberger, since<br />
1986.<br />
ASPATURIAN: So that must have been—<br />
TOMBRELLO: That caused some interesting problems. Because I don’t believe that Koonin had a<br />
huge amount of respect for Charlie Peck. Not as much as he should have, actually. Part of that<br />
was, of course, that Peck had been chosen over Koonin. Peck had been chosen over me, too.<br />
But, you know, I figured, Hey, I can work <strong>with</strong> this! I’m still running the staffing committee,<br />
and Charlie isn’t getting in my way. Charlie did one thing that I had to be myself about. I’d<br />
been teaching Physics 11. That was the deal. Charlie then, basically, tells Frautschi to tell<br />
<strong>Tombrello</strong>—<br />
ASPATURIAN: [Professor of theoretical physics] Steve Frautschi—<br />
TOMBRELLO: Yes. He tells Frautschi, the executive officer [for physics], “Go tell <strong>Tombrello</strong><br />
he’s going to teach Physics 1 for a term.” I tell Frautschi, “No!”<br />
ASPATURIAN: That’s the introductory course?<br />
http://resolver.caltech.edu/<strong>Caltech</strong>OH:OH_<strong>Tombrello</strong>_T