Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–147
TOMBRELLO: Yes. I’d taught it many times in the past. But I had a deal with Caltech. I was
teaching Physics 11. I had won the Feynman prize, I wasn’t about to teach Physics 1. Everhart
says, “Who do you think you are?” I said, “I know perfectly well who I am. I’ll teach it for a
thousand dollars a lecture. It’ll be a bargain. It’ll be wonderful. But I’m not putting up with this
crap.” And Charlie Peck came in about something, and I basically chewed him out for about an
hour. I ended up not teaching Physics 1.
But Charlie and I got on pretty well. We’d known one another since I came here in ’61.
He’d been a grad student who was just about to get or had just gotten his PhD [1964]. I know
Charlie and respect him. He’s good. He’s smart. He was not a great division chair, but he had
problems that, you know, were not easy to solve, and he solved some of them and didn’t solve
others. You could say the same thing for me. Same thing for anybody who gets a new job like
that.
So, the staffing committee. There was a situation where the committee found two
candidates—one in string theory and one closely allied. But they were theorists, and we needed
to start rebuilding theory.
ASPATURIAN: Who were they?
TOMBRELLO: [Juan] Maldacena, who’s at the Institute for Advanced Study, and a guy named
[Kenneth] Intriligator, who is, I think, still a professor down at UC San Diego.
ASPATURIAN: Is he any relation to Mike Intriligator?
TOMBRELLO: I don’t know who that is, but I believe his mother is a planetary scientist at UCLA.
ASPATURIAN: I think he is. I know Mike [Michael D.] Intriligator. He is a UCLA economist.
This must be his son.
TOMBRELLO: Koonin had basically told Peck he’d accept one candidate. The committee—
remember now, I had built this committee into a powerhouse, because it had all these
opinionated people on it; I think we even had Robbie on it—basically put our foot down and told
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