Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–27
We did that again in the summer of 1972. They couldn’t find us an apartment. We stayed in a
trailer park. I’ve lived in a trailer park a couple of times.
ASPATURIAN: Interesting experience. It almost sounds like a sitcom premise.
TOMBRELLO: Yeah, right.
ASPATURIAN: Nuclear physicist living in trailer park.
TOMBRELLO: My son and I bicycled all over the Jemez Mountains and even began to start
climbing in the Sangre de Cristo range. Now I’ve got to throw in a little bit about undergrads. In
1971 I had an undergrad named Tom [Thomas A.] Weaver. Before that I’d had Caltech
undergrads who were great; but Tom Weaver was phenomenal. Jumping ahead, he won the
Lawrence prize [the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award of the American Physical Society] when
he was in his thirties. We published four papers together his senior year. This is wild for an
undergraduate. He won the Green prize [George W. Green Memorial Award] at Caltech. Then
he went off to grad school at Berkeley. He had been Willy Fowler’s advisee. Willy had another
advisee, and since having Weaver work with me had gone so well, this other advisee also gets
sent down to see me. And his name is Steve [Steven E.] Koonin [former professor of theoretical
physics]. This is 1972.
ASPATURIAN: Describe Steve Koonin in those days for me.
TOMBRELLO: He had been in a one-term undergraduate course I taught in nuclear physics. For
one of the first assignments—and I think I can probably find it for you later—he turns in
something, and I write a note across it that says, “Mr. Koonin, I think this is publishable.”
[Laughter] I start handing these things back in class, and I look around and say, “Which one of
you is Mr. Koonin?” He began to work with me on a theoretical problem that was kind of
interesting.
ASPATURIAN: What was he like in those days?
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