Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–249
as good as you can imagine. While I was division chair, I was running a little training program
for people to take on leadership positions. Anneila was clearly already a leader, and I just
wanted to see if I could continue that education in a positive way. But she was already moving
along. Andy Lange was one of the trainees. I put him on the LIGO oversight committee here
with Emlyn Hughes [visiting associate in physics], whom I hired in 1995. Because Berkeley got
so divided on whether to take Fiona or Emlyn Hughes, they lost both to Caltech. They
sometimes shoot themselves not just in one foot.
ASPATURIAN: Do you think maybe it’s harder when you’re a state university—you’re operating
under more constraints?
TOMBRELLO: In that particular case, it was just the sociology of the department. But Emlyn, I
knew, was also a promising person. So I put him on the LIGO oversight committee. He chaired
it and actually, in my opinion, has probably been its most effective chair. He led them when
[LIGO director Barry] Barish decided to retire early. [Kip] Thorne and Barish had agreed on Jay
Marx [senior research associate in physics] as Barish’s successor, but they had not systematically
looked at some women, and I had to do a lot of very careful recovery from that to make sure that
women actually did get included before a final decision got made. It looked like a setup deal,
how they got a great director. But they really had to do the right thing. Because there were two
women who wanted to be considered and who were clearly very qualified. So there were
decisions that Emlyn and I had to make. They were not extremely popular with the LIGO
people, but at the same time we ended up hiring their choice. Now that Jay’s retiring, they’re
going to have to do it again, without having Emlyn running the committee. He did a great job.
He left Caltech a number of years ago [2008] to go to Columbia. He’s a professor there in highenergy
physics and is part of the ATLAS detector group at CERN [European Organization for
Nuclear Research]. I think he’s a natural leader and will go far.
So I had trainees. Anneila was a very successful one. I didn’t think she was going to be
nanny to the undergrads [vice president for student affairs], but as near as I can tell, she’s doing a
good job. And it can’t be totally easy. Well, it’s easy in one respect—she’s replacing Margo
Marshak, and anybody after Margo or John Hall is going to look good. Not that John was as bad
as Margo, but he didn’t have the right personality to be the VP. Anneila does. It’s working very
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