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>–205<br />
TOMBRELLO: Not exactly. We’ll have to step back to 1998. I’d been on the committee, because<br />
I wasn’t chair yet, to hire Reinhard Genzel from Europe to come to <strong>Caltech</strong>. But he eventually<br />
backed out of negotiations. I asked Roger Blandford, “What do we do next?” He said, “You<br />
ought to look at Richard Ellis.” I did. At the time, he was at Cambridge. He had previously<br />
been at Durham University, where he had made a name for himself. I got him over here.<br />
Realized he was ambitious and hungry for a big telescope. Well, I had two big telescopes. The<br />
British were not showing any signs of life on big telescopes. I also had a plan for an even bigger<br />
telescope. I would have wanted Richard no matter what, but Richard resonated <strong>with</strong> the<br />
telescope project. He would immediately have a piece of <strong>Caltech</strong>’s time—a lot of time—on the<br />
Kecks, and he had the promise of an even bigger telescope. So, yes, I didn’t go after Richard<br />
<strong>with</strong> the idea of TMT, but TMT went after Richard Ellis for me, you might say. Richard wanted<br />
something big. People have said, “Oh, you’re going to lose Richard Ellis.” I tell them, “Not<br />
unless they have a bigger telescope than I have.” He’s a good guy. We hit it off quite well, and I<br />
think we did some nice things together. He replaced Wal Sargent as head of Palomar. He had a<br />
vision that matched the vision that we were already working on, and it has gone very, very well.<br />
Richard has a different style than some of our other great observers at <strong>Caltech</strong>, and we<br />
have some really truly great observers at <strong>Caltech</strong>. Wal Sargent’s one of them; and of course<br />
Maarten Schmidt was as good as we ever had. We have the former student of Wal Sargent’s,<br />
Chuck [Charles C.] Steidel [DuBridge Professor of Astronomy], who has clearly become one of<br />
the giants in the field. Chuck is an amazing man. I keep thinking of him as a young man; he’s<br />
probably fifty now—still young, compared to myself. He has the ability— There’s this old joke<br />
that Ronald Reagan used to tell about optimism. A kid is given the job of shoveling out a stable.<br />
And the kid is happy as a clam; he’s whistling; and somebody says, “You’re shoveling shit, kid.<br />
Why are you so happy?” The kid says, “With all this horse shit in here, somewhere there’s got<br />
to be a pony.”<br />
All I can say about Steidel is that I would be willing to bet that he can walk into any<br />
stable and pick up the one gold coin that’s hidden somewhere by just reaching down and picking<br />
it up. He has an absolute genius for doing the right observations. People talk about data mining.<br />
If you’ve got Chuck Steidel, you don’t have to mine data. He just finds the soft spot<br />
immediately. He’s a genius.<br />
http://resolver.caltech.edu/<strong>Caltech</strong>OH:OH_<strong>Tombrello</strong>_T