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>–201<br />
There were many things that were unexpected, and I’m going to start <strong>with</strong> one of those,<br />
and now we have to go back to the fall of 1998. Koonin and I and a number of others are<br />
celebrating some anniversary—maybe for Owens Valley—and he says, “Well, when are you<br />
going to produce a proposal for the next big telescope?” I said, “Hey, boss. That’s a great idea.<br />
I think we’re going to start on that this afternoon.” So Wal [Wallace L. W.] Sargent [Bowen<br />
Professor of Astronomy] is up there, because his wife, Anneila, is director of the observatory. I<br />
said, “Hey, Wal. How’d you like a big telescope?” That started what has become the TMT<br />
Project. Koonin and I started it. We had $1 million from Gordon Moore. Gordon was very<br />
generous, has always been very generous. But he hadn’t picked that particular project. It was<br />
money he’d given <strong>Caltech</strong>, and Koonin gave it to me and said, “Get this thing started.” We put<br />
some other money together, and we got started on that. After about a year, we discovered that<br />
<strong>Caltech</strong> just couldn’t do it alone. <strong>Caltech</strong> did not have much expertise in optical telescope<br />
building, although lots of expertise in observing on the telescopes. So we pulled in the<br />
University of California and then added other partners. But that brings up strategy from the<br />
point of view of a division chair. Except for this $1 million in seed money, there was really no<br />
movement forward of trying to get any TMT funding out of the campaign that was getting<br />
started. Baltimore was not convinced it was a project worth funding. Something interesting<br />
happened. Bud [Albert D.] Wheelon, one of the trustees, had said to me privately, “You know,<br />
the trustees would really like to go to some off-site things, rather than just always meet at<br />
<strong>Caltech</strong> or Smoke Tree or wherever.” I said, “Oh, yeah? You have anything in mind?” He said,<br />
“Well, we could go to LIGO.” Then the penny dropped, and I thought, “You know, Bud, I have<br />
a different idea.”<br />
So I went to Baltimore and said, “I’ve heard from Bud Wheelon that the trustees would<br />
like to go other places. What if we had an off-site trustees’ meeting on the Big Island of Hawaii<br />
at Mauna Kea?” He said, “That’s a great idea. But what would they do?” I said, “Well, we’re<br />
close to the telescopes, so I guess I could arrange that people would give some talks, and we<br />
could have some tours of the observatories. We’ve got the sub-millimeter observatory. We’ve<br />
got the Keck Telescopes. You know, we could really make it into an interesting meeting.” He<br />
said, “Oh, that’s good. We’ll do that.” I thought, You don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m not<br />
going to tell you. So, of course, what did we have? We had talks by Ed Stone about how the<br />
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