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>–194<br />
TOMBRELLO: Well, of course the candidate is the one who knows the least about it. I knew a<br />
little bit about the [search] committee. I believe that the committee had two concerns. One, they<br />
needed to get things going in the division. Two, they knew that times were likely to be tight. So<br />
they felt that they had to have somebody running the division who could say no. I do not think<br />
they put forward any other names. I don’t think my choice was particularly popular <strong>with</strong> David<br />
Baltimore—but, anyway. They sold it, and Koonin and Baltimore approved the appointment. I<br />
took over.<br />
ASPATURIAN: Were you surprised?<br />
TOMBRELLO: In a way, yes. I had been asked several times, in previous searches for chairs,<br />
about whether I had any ambitions in that regard. I said, “Look, I have had the luxury”—or<br />
taken the luxury, the liberty—“of saying exactly what I’ve thought all the time.” I knew that was<br />
not popular, and I knew that was a career-limiting attribute, particularly to be something like<br />
chair of the division.<br />
I think of myself as a reasonably sane person, and I knew perfectly well that having taken<br />
such a liberty, or a whole series of liberties, reduced the chance of being division chair to pretty<br />
close to zero. I told several different search committees that. I think they all believed it. Yet I<br />
knew I had been a candidate in the previous search, where they put forward four names. I<br />
thought that the odds I’d be chosen those times were small, and they were zero. I thought—<br />
when I was interviewed in 1998—that the chances weren’t very high then, either. I thought the<br />
division was a bit desperate, because they knew there were priorities that needed to go through. I<br />
think we mentioned that the division staffing committee I set up had arrived at a set of priorities.<br />
The first was to find money for endowed postdoctoral fellowships. The second was to try to hire<br />
Ed Witten, the best elementary-particle theorist they could think of. And, perhaps dead last, to<br />
get that astrophysics building that had been kicking around since 1966. I was certainly prepared<br />
to try to get those things through. We had a new president, Baltimore. I figured there would<br />
probably be a fund-raising campaign. There had been no announcement, but I assumed it was<br />
out there lurking. I didn’t think things were going to be quite as bad financially as the division<br />
thought they were going to be, although the first thing I encountered—I mentioned this<br />
yesterday—was that out of a budget of millions, my predecessor, Charlie Peck, had left me a<br />
http://resolver.caltech.edu/<strong>Caltech</strong>OH:OH_<strong>Tombrello</strong>_T