Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

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Tombrello–174 THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO SESSION 7 December 28, 2010 ASPATURIAN: This is December 28th, and we are going to talk about your involvement in activities at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. National laboratories. TOMBRELLO: As a student at Rice, I’d always been intrigued by Los Alamos because of what had happened there during the war, and because I knew some of the people. A curious thing happened when I was an NSF postdoc for the first time here at Caltech. I figured the postdoc wasn’t going to last more than a year, and while I was looking around for what to do next, some interviewers from Los Alamos came to the campus. I interviewed and very quickly got a letter back saying they weren’t interested. OK, I figured, that’s par for the course. Then I went off to an American Physical Society meeting in Washington and ran into somebody named Lawrence Cranberg, whom I had never met, but I knew his work—and he was at Los Alamos. He saw my nametag. Pounced on me and said, “I am so excited that you are interested in coming to Los Alamos. I’m really looking forward to having you there.” And I said, “Larry, you’ve got to be joking.” He says, “No. I’m not joking. I’m very enthusiastic about this.” I said, “Well, several weeks ago, I got a rejection letter from Los Alamos.” He says, “Several weeks ago? I have only had your CV for a couple of days.” So that was my first connection to Los Alamos. [Laughter] I was fired and then hired, but by then I had already agreed to go to Yale. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d gotten a more positive response; I probably would have gone to Los Alamos. One of the things that happened right after we came back to Caltech from Yale was that I got a call from Los Alamos again. We’d driven across the country twice in one year in the middle of the winter, so we were a little shell-shocked. I was offered the possibility of becoming director of the cyclotron there. Remember, I’m still in my twenties; I’m a postdoc again, and had been an assistant professor for maybe a total of six months or something. So I just couldn’t move my family again, although it was an attractive offer. I was at Caltech; I was having fun. http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T
Tombrello–175 And then in the summer of 1971—so now we’ve moved ten years forward—I’d been doing some work on accelerator design. The people at Los Alamos got interested in some of those designs and invited me to come. At the same time, I was on a time-allocation committee for an accelerator that was just being built there called LAMPF [Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility], which was a high-energy nuclear physics facility, with a big linear accelerator. The whole family went, and it was a wonderful experience that was repeated for the next two summers, most of which I spent on this accelerator design project. It didn’t go anywhere, but it was a lot of fun, and I published some papers on it. And of course, the scheduling committee at LAMPF continued, so I continued going back and forth to Los Alamos after that. It all worked well until the early eighties, when Jay [George] Keyworth, who was head of the physics division at Los Alamos, went off to be Reagan’s science advisor. I think that they wanted to burn all trace of Jay and anybody who had had anything to do with him. Suddenly, I discovered I was no longer welcome at Los Alamos. They canceled my security clearance—not that I’d been doing very much that had anything to do with national security at that point. But a friend of mine, Tom Sugihara, who had been dean of science at Texas A & M and had gone on to become a kind of a guru to the head of the chemistry directorate at Livermore, realized suddenly that I was up for grabs. He got me involved with Livermore. I’d been up there; I’d given talks. I knew people there, but I’d never really had any relationship with them. What he wanted me to do was some organizing. They had two new visiting committees there, but they were rather haphazard and really didn’t do much. Tom said, “I’d like you to come here. Organize a committee—two committees; one for the materials science half of this directorate and the other half for the chemistry side. I want them to look like the reviews of Argonne National Laboratory.” At the time, actually, I was on the Argonne review committees, so I knew about how it worked. At Argonne, you had a number of diversely organized committees, reporting to the University of Chicago, but at Livermore we were reporting to the lab’s upper management and the University of California. I agreed to study it and to set up the two committees. All this began to really happen about the time I went to Schlumberger. So I was doing it while I was at Schlumberger, too. ASPATURIAN: Two management portfolios at once. http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T
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THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO (b. 1936) INTER
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Contact information Archives, Calif
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NOTE TO READERS Per agreement betwe
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Tombrello-iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTE
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Tombrello-vi Session 4 68-72 Colleg
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Tombrello-viii his presidency. Tomb
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Tombrello-x 206-213 Establishes (wi
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CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
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Tombrello-3 TOMBRELLO: Bisacquino.
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Tombrello-5 TOMBRELLO: This proceed
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Tombrello-7 Memphis, and I believe
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Tombrello-9 otherwise, we mostly we
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Tombrello-11 of the ability of the
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Tombrello-13 truly bigger than life
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Tombrello-15 I associated with the
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Tombrello-17 they’re probably rig
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Tombrello-19 ASPATURIAN: Your thesi
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Tombrello-21 wonderful time. And yo
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Tombrello-23 TOMBRELLO: Let me go o
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Tombrello-25 ASPATURIAN: When you s
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Tombrello-27 We did that again in t
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Tombrello-29 funding our research t
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Tombrello-31 from the NSF grant, bu
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Tombrello-33 doing great stuff, bec
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Tombrello-35 TOMBRELLO: I wasn’t
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Tombrello-37 [Morrisroe Professor o
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Tombrello-39 clearly willing to pay
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Tombrello-41 my teaching assignment
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Tombrello-43 ASPATURIAN: No. TOMBRE
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Tombrello-45 Charlie, that’s numb
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Tombrello-47 heavy ions. Jancaitis
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Tombrello-49 because, no surprise,
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Tombrello-51 of a wreck somewhere.
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Tombrello-53 concurrent computers,
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Tombrello-55 your green card.” He
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Tombrello-57 USC. She said, “My n
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Tombrello-59 video of it. Brian was
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Tombrello-61 ASPATURIAN: Without th
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Tombrello-63 ASPATURIAN: Consciousn
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Tombrello-65 Stone reported this co
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Tombrello-67 says, “That is so im
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Tombrello-69 basement was where I l
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Tombrello-71 Graaff generators] at
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Tombrello-73 groups at Chicago, and
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Tombrello-75 TOMBRELLO: I think it
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Tombrello-77 TOMBRELLO: Yes. I reme
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Tombrello-79 TOMBRELLO: Well, it wa
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Tombrello-81 were made up of these
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Tombrello-83 TOMBRELLO: It had a re
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Tombrello-85 ASPATURIAN: It wasn’
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Tombrello-87 Remington bronzes but
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Tombrello-89 He’d done all kinds
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Tombrello-91 side, with totally ira
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Tombrello-93 TOMBRELLO: Yes. It too
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Tombrello-95 wouldn’t have asked
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Tombrello-97 U.S. independent of fo
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Tombrello-99 own operating people a
Page 115 and 116: Tombrello-101 particularly in compa
Page 117 and 118: Tombrello-103 Six months later, “
Page 119 and 120: Tombrello-105 necessary—that was
Page 121 and 122: Tombrello-107 make things harder. A
Page 123 and 124: Tombrello-109 TOMBRELLO: It really
Page 125 and 126: Tombrello-111 it. It was clearly an
Page 127 and 128: Tombrello-113 little bit—he had h
Page 129 and 130: Tombrello-115 protons, you didn’t
Page 131 and 132: Tombrello-117 Did she have an affai
Page 133 and 134: Tombrello-119 questions. But Murray
Page 135 and 136: Tombrello-121 marvelous teacher—h
Page 137 and 138: Tombrello-123 ASPATURIAN: What I ha
Page 139 and 140: Tombrello-125 ASPATURIAN: That woul
Page 141 and 142: Tombrello-127 and all sorts of thin
Page 143 and 144: Tombrello-129 ASPATURIAN: Someone e
Page 145 and 146: Tombrello-131 DuBridge interpreted
Page 147 and 148: Tombrello-133 sciences. They were g
Page 149 and 150: Tombrello-135 candidates came and g
Page 151 and 152: Tombrello-137 TOMBRELLO: I don’t
Page 153 and 154: Tombrello-139 TOMBRELLO: Yes. But I
Page 155 and 156: Tombrello-141 opposite sides. But h
Page 157 and 158: Tombrello-143 ASPATURIAN: Now, was
Page 159 and 160: Tombrello-145 ASPATURIAN: Really? T
Page 161 and 162: Tombrello-147 TOMBRELLO: Yes. I’d
Page 163 and 164: Tombrello-149 I believe he had a vi
Page 165: Tombrello-151 to predict something
Page 169 and 170: Tombrello-177 think you need that c
Page 171 and 172: Tombrello-179 nuclear counterterror
Page 173 and 174: Tombrello-181 spoiled by that. The
Page 175 and 176: Tombrello-183 particularly the weap
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Page 179 and 180: Tombrello-187 with those that alrea
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Page 183 and 184: Tombrello-191 TOMBRELLO: I know. I
Page 185 and 186: Tombrello-193 THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO S
Page 187 and 188: Tombrello-195 discretionary $19,000
Page 189 and 190: Tombrello-197 Lange is PMA chairman
Page 191 and 192: Tombrello-199 Witten’s here, Zewa
Page 193 and 194: Tombrello-201 There were many thing
Page 195 and 196: Tombrello-203 the key—the hallmar
Page 197 and 198: Tombrello-205 TOMBRELLO: Not exactl
Page 199 and 200: Tombrello-207 pieces of hardware th
Page 201 and 202: Tombrello-209 TOMBRELLO: It’s nic
Page 203 and 204: Tombrello-211 Wendy, until well int
Page 205 and 206: Tombrello-213 realized it was a wor
Page 207 and 208: Tombrello-215 you try for. But you
Page 209 and 210: Tombrello-217 TOMBRELLO: He did not
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Page 215 and 216: Tombrello-223 He’s not dumb. OK.
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Tombrello-225 ASPATURIAN: And incre
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Tombrello-227 could control him. We
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Tombrello-233 down to the late stag
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Tombrello-235 THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO S
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Tombrello-237 the tandem laboratory
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Tombrello-239 picked Motorola’s 6
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Tombrello-241 ASPATURIAN: How did y
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Tombrello-243 town, staying in a ve
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Tombrello-245 TOMBRELLO: Somebody v
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Tombrello-247 years before, I’d s
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Tombrello-249 as good as you can im
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Tombrello-251 Los Alamos is a wonde
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Tombrello-253 TOMBRELLO: No. I thin
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Tombrello-255 navy, done the submar
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Tombrello-257 TOMBRELLO: —had don
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Tombrello-259 interesting people wh
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Tombrello-261 putting up a substant
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Tombrello-263 TOMBRELLO: I think so
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Tombrello-265 TOMBRELLO: There were
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Tombrello-267 at that, just to see
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Tombrello-269 ASPATURIAN: Is he ori
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