Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–222
Quinta. I said, “Wow, I’d like to throw Lange’s name in.” Lange was here, but he and Frances
were looking around. Somebody was after the two of them—perhaps Stanford. I wanted to do
something. I’d raised money for the second flight of BOOMERanG. I’d raised money for the
some of the equipment development. Not huge amounts of money—a few million here and
there, but enough. I told Lange this was his shot, and that we could probably get about $12
million out of the Moore thing, out of turn, if he produced a performance at this gathering of
suitable quality. Lange was a performer. They mobbed the stage; it was like something out of
the Roxy Theater. The trustees were first cheering and then up there trying to talk to him. It was
inspiring. It was beautifully done. Twelve million dollars out of turn. Not so shabby.
The interesting thing was the Keck Foundation. This shows low cunning, but also
strategy. David Baltimore had managed to offend the Keck Foundation—or Bob [Robert A.]
Day, who’s chairman of the board of the Keck Foundation, by pushing this proposal for KISS —
the Keck Institute for Space Sciences. The foundation didn’t want it. Baltimore got the Caltech
people associated with the Keck board to back it. Day felt that lobbying individual members of
the Keck board was unfair, out of turn. He, by God, was not going to put up with it—he might
let KISS through, but Caltech was a dead issue. So we angered the chairman of the Keck board.
Baltimore did not have a delicate touch.
Now, I wanted to get a grant for Lange out of the Keck Foundation. The administration
had just proposed these division chair’s councils—you know, outsiders who come in and give
advice to the divisions and who will also serve as a kind of fan club to help you raise money.
This was the summer of 2007, something like that. Some of the trustees, including Bill [William
H.] Davidow and David Lee, have agreed to be on this thing for PMA. Another trustee, Charlie
Charles R.] Trimble—Trimble Navigation, home GPSes, former Caltech undergrad—has agreed
to be on it. Quite a charming man, a wonderful man. He won my heart when he compared me to
David Packard. I thought to myself, well, I’m not David Packard—I knew David Packard—but
it was a very nice thing to say. At the same time I got this mess on my hands at the Keck
Foundation. The board is antagonistic, but now I have this chair’s council thing, and I meet a
new member of the CARA [California Association for Research in Astronomy] board—the
board that runs the Keck Telescopes—and they always have a representative from the Keck
Foundation. It’s young T. J. Keck, the grandson of the Keck who gave us the money. I like T.
J.; he’s charming; he’s sweet. He seems younger than he is—pretends to be dumber than he is.
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