Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–251
Los Alamos is a wonderful scientific and engineering laboratory, but it is not structured to
develop leaders, and in fact, trying to move from science to administration is discouraged even at
the lowest level. So Los Alamos does not tend to develop leaders. At Livermore, on the other
hand, young people are encouraged to move from being a classic scientist or engineer to a
position where they are running a group of ten people. They get a lot of help from their
colleagues and from the institution. And so it is no great surprise to me that Mike [Michael R.]
Anastasio, who did all his professional development at Livermore, is now director of Los
Alamos. I think it’s perfectly natural that some institutions cultivate leaders and some don’t,
even though the two institutions can be equally good at doing science and engineering. Bell
Labs, of course, has a wonderful history of developing leaders. I think IBM did as well. Some
places probably don’t do well at it. Developing leaders get killed off at some stage. It could be
infighting; it could be the fact that the norms of the institution are such that they look down on
people who want to move into administration. I think that’s a little bit the view at Los Alamos—
you’ve taken on administration, and therefore you can’t be good at science. Well.
ASPATURIAN: There does seem to be a stigma that sometimes surfaces in connection with this in
academia.
TOMBRELLO: A few people have to develop into leaders. Let me talk about another woman,
because she’s an interesting case: France Córdova. France was a technician in the [Gordon]
Garmire astrophysics group. Somewhere in the early to mid-seventies, she came to see me and
said, “I’d like to be a graduate student.” I said, “Tell me about yourself.”
She said, “Well, I have an English degree from Stanford.” I think she taught in public
school for a while. And then she got this technician job. She really liked science, and she
decided she wanted to be a grad student. I said, “Well, France, you certainly have the ambition.
Let’s see if you have the discipline to do what I suggest. Go around to three professors who are
teaching the required, first-year grad student courses in physics, and ask them if you can audit
the courses and if they will keep track of your grades on homework and exams. If you do that
successfully for even half a year, you will have three people to write letters for you saying
basically that you are capable of doing graduate work at Caltech.” She did have the discipline to
do it, and she got into graduate school here, got her PhD with Garmire, and went to Los Alamos.
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