Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

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Tombrello–202 Kecks had gotten started. Then, we had a talk by Jerry Nelson, the inventor of the Keck telescopes. I had a captive audience. I had all the trustees, but I had one trustee whom I had targeted—that was Gordon. I was going to educate Gordon about big telescopes and the future and the vision of building the next big telescope. The start of it was that off-site meeting at Mauna Kea, and I had definitely planned it as the beginning of making this telescope real—not at the million-dollar level. Development played no role in it. They had no idea what I was doing because, frankly, Development didn’t think, after having just finished the Kecks, that there was any money there for more telescopes. I thought: What do you guys know? I don’t know either, but we have to start. The trustees had a wonderful time. Gordon had a wonderful time. We had all sorts of interesting adventures with the telescopes, with rides up the mountain, parties. You don’t have to be overt about fund-raising. You can start it as an educational program, knowing it may come to nothing. But unless you start it and show people the point, you’re never going to get anywhere. I think the classic Development thing would have been to go to Gordon with a proposal and ask him to say yes or no. ASPATURIAN: I believe that’s correct. TOMBRELLO: And the answer you’ll get is, It’s much too soon. ASPATURIAN: So your approach was a classic example of show, not tell. TOMBRELLO: Take your time. Be patient, but always have a framework in which to do things. There are a lot of people who think strategy is a rigid structure. Strategy is a framework—a framework in which you will have some serendipitous event, and suddenly things are in this framework in a different order than they were. But without the framework, without the strategic vision, you don’t know where to put things. You don’t often recognize opportunities. It wasn’t just the TMT; there were a number of areas that were like that. Frameworks that were not fleshed out, but as time went on you had things happen, and you could attach objects to them, or attach directions to them. The flow chart might change a little bit because of something that happened, but you always knew where you were trying to go. You had a pretty good idea of how much money was involved, and we’re talking about a lot of money for the TMT. That was http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T
Tombrello–203 the key—the hallmark—to my being chair. I think I brought strategy—maybe some will say low cunning—to the job. I’ll give another example—this is something that has not been funded yet but I hope will be. I needed an outside partner. I was the first chair of the board for CARMA [Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy]. CARMA was the combined Berkeley–Caltech project to build a radio telescope observatory up in the Inyo Mountains and to use Owens Valley as the base camp. Through blind bad luck or good luck or whatever, I was the first chair of that, and I wanted an outside advisory committee. I got John Carlstrom, who used to be an astronomer at Caltech. I adore John. I’d love to bring him back here. But I wanted somebody else, too, and someone said get Martha Haynes. She’s a radio astronomer at Cornell and responsible for the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. I’d never met her, but we got on the phone. We must have talked for two hours. It was a meeting of the minds. We talked about CARMA, mainly. And then she started asking me about other things in radio astronomy at Caltech. I said, “Well, I’ve got this observatory on top of Mauna Kea. Now, it’s an aging observatory, but it has a ten-meter sub-millimeter telescope, designed by Robert Leighton. It’s a very good telescope, but I have to start getting that group thinking about where we go next. They are superb instrumenters—Jonas Zmuidzinas [Kingsley Professor of Physics] and Tom [Thomas G.] Phillips [MacArthur Professor of Physics]. They build beautiful stuff. This is one of the world’s great groups, with one of the world’s great facilities.” She said, “Well, we have some ideas at Cornell, about building the next generation of those.” And I said, “Well, hey, Martha. Why don’t we get together?” And so CCAT [Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope] arose out of that conversation. Again, if you have a framework and somebody says the right word, you know what the next step is in this journey of a thousand miles. At that moment, CCAT was born. In those days, it was the Cornell–Caltech Atacama Telescope. I found some money. Jakob van Zyl, at JPL [deputy director for the Astronomy and Physics Directorate], found some money. Cornell had some money. We started a concept study, followed by what seems to be now a design study. We still haven’t raised a lot of money. I hope to get some from Caltech. But now we’re in this recession, although I do believe still that Caltech will put up some money for it. Let’s talk about TMT some more, because, again, it’s strategy. At the time, my former student was the provost. I talk to him. He’s a believer. He and I were founding fathers, you 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
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Tombrello-101 particularly in compa
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Tombrello-103 Six months later, “
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Tombrello-105 necessary—that was
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Tombrello-107 make things harder. A
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Tombrello-109 TOMBRELLO: It really
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Tombrello-111 it. It was clearly an
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Tombrello-113 little bit—he had h
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Tombrello-115 protons, you didn’t
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Tombrello-117 Did she have an affai
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Tombrello-119 questions. But Murray
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Tombrello-121 marvelous teacher—h
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Tombrello-123 ASPATURIAN: What I ha
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Tombrello-125 ASPATURIAN: That woul
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Tombrello-127 and all sorts of thin
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Page 145 and 146: Tombrello-131 DuBridge interpreted
Page 147 and 148: Tombrello-133 sciences. They were g
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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
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Page 167 and 168: Tombrello-175 And then in the summe
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Page 171 and 172: Tombrello-179 nuclear counterterror
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Page 185 and 186: Tombrello-193 THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO S
Page 187 and 188: Tombrello-195 discretionary $19,000
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Page 217 and 218: Tombrello-225 ASPATURIAN: And incre
Page 219 and 220: Tombrello-227 could control him. We
Page 221 and 222: Tombrello-233 down to the late stag
Page 223 and 224: Tombrello-235 THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO S
Page 225 and 226: Tombrello-237 the tandem laboratory
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Page 229 and 230: Tombrello-241 ASPATURIAN: How did y
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Page 233 and 234: Tombrello-245 TOMBRELLO: Somebody v
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Page 237 and 238: Tombrello-249 as good as you can im
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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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Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

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