Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–177
think you need that combination. So I’ll be interested to see how this develops. I believe the
reason for this is that Koonin thinks there’s going to be a breakthrough in this.
ASPATURIAN: Does he really?
TOMBRELLO: And that if it happens, somebody is going to reasonably ask the Department of
Energy, What are you doing next?
ASPATURIAN: Because you know the old joke about plasma fusion—
TOMBRELLO: It’s a great future source of energy that will always be in our future. [Laughter]
Oh, yes, indeed, and that joke went around the committee the other day, which was barely a
week and a half ago. If you’ve had your ears stuck to a cell phone for sixteen hours over two
days, you remember it. But it would have been worse, going to Washington and getting stuck in
a blizzard. They were all very envious of me describing the palm trees and the fact that I was
drinking a glass of wine.
So I got these committees started, and they were successful almost immediately. The lab
management liked it. The University of California liked it. I believe we provided a conduit for
people working there both to find out what other people were doing and to get their views known
to the higher-ups.
ASPATURIAN: Now, this was the late 1980s?
TOMBRELLO: Right. I think the first committee meeting was probably in 1988. That was the
chemistry committee, followed by the materials science committee. OK. I go back to Caltech,
and this continues. We had one memorable meeting when I was flying up on Southwest
Airlines. I had decided that for variety I would fly into San Jose instead of Oakland. October
1989. The pilot announces there has been a big earthquake and the Bay Bridge has been
damaged, and I thought, “It’s not April Fools’ Day. What is this?” But we land without incident
at San Jose. It was the only open airport in the whole area. Some of my committee never got
there. They circled and never landed anywhere. But I figured out a way to get to Livermore
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