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>–177<br />
think you need that combination. So I’ll be interested to see how this develops. I believe the<br />
reason for this is that Koonin thinks there’s going to be a breakthrough in this.<br />
ASPATURIAN: Does he really?<br />
TOMBRELLO: And that if it happens, somebody is going to reasonably ask the Department of<br />
Energy, What are you doing next?<br />
ASPATURIAN: Because you know the old joke about plasma fusion—<br />
TOMBRELLO: It’s a great future source of energy that will always be in our future. [Laughter]<br />
Oh, yes, indeed, and that joke went around the committee the other day, which was barely a<br />
week and a half ago. If you’ve had your ears stuck to a cell phone for sixteen hours over two<br />
days, you remember it. But it would have been worse, going to Washington and getting stuck in<br />
a blizzard. They were all very envious of me describing the palm trees and the fact that I was<br />
drinking a glass of wine.<br />
So I got these committees started, and they were successful almost immediately. The lab<br />
management liked it. The University of California liked it. I believe we provided a conduit for<br />
people working there both to find out what other people were doing and to get their views known<br />
to the higher-ups.<br />
ASPATURIAN: Now, this was the late 1980s?<br />
TOMBRELLO: Right. I think the first committee meeting was probably in 1988. That was the<br />
chemistry committee, followed by the materials science committee. OK. I go back to <strong>Caltech</strong>,<br />
and this continues. We had one memorable meeting when I was flying up on Southwest<br />
Airlines. I had decided that for variety I would fly into San Jose instead of Oakland. October<br />
1989. The pilot announces there has been a big earthquake and the Bay Bridge has been<br />
damaged, and I thought, “It’s not April Fools’ Day. What is this?” But we land <strong>with</strong>out incident<br />
at San Jose. It was the only open airport in the whole area. Some of my committee never got<br />
there. They circled and never landed anywhere. But I figured out a way to get to Livermore<br />
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