Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–21
wonderful time. And you fell into a kind of community of people. There were lots of visitors.
Young visitors. There was a swimming pool; kids were in swimming classes. We only had one,
but Susan was on her way. She was born in the summer of ’62.
ASPATURIAN: This would be your second child?
TOMBRELLO: Yes. We loved it here. We were the same age as the students and probably just
about as impoverished. I was being paid by the NSF, though Caltech didn’t pay very much
either. We really enjoyed it. But after about a year, I wondered where it was going. I realized
that my advisor had been putting my name out on the street. I began to have people contacting
me, like, “What are you going to do next?” With a little bit of looking around, we ended up
deciding to go to Yale—
ASPATURIAN: A really different choice.
TOMBRELLO: I was hired as an instructor. We were going to leave at the end of the summer of
’62. But then I got an extension, because we were doing some experiments I was really having
fun with.
ASPATURIAN: Whom were you working with at this time?
TOMBRELLO: I was working more or less by myself and with some of the grad students. Andy
Bacher, who became one of my very first students, was the son of the head of the Division of
Physics, Math, and Astronomy [PMA], Robert Bacher [professor of physics, emeritus, d. 2004].
During that period, Bacher got kicked upstairs to provost. Carl Anderson [professor of physics,
emeritus, d.1991] was about to become division chair.
So, anyway, we leave for Yale in the middle of the winter, driving a somewhat old car,
and have all the adventures you can have with freezing weather, old car, and a little girl who’s a
few months old with an ear infection screaming in the back seat. It was interesting. I admit that
Yale didn’t look all that great. We arrived in New Haven, old black snow piled up along the
curbs, trying to find a place to live. We rented a furnished house—furnished in early Salvation
Army or worse. I was making probably even slightly less money as an instructor than I had at
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