Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–29
funding our research to the NSF. As a board member, Willy couldn’t be a PI [principal
investigator] over an NSF grant. So Tommy became PI of the NSF grant. But then the times
suddenly changed. In 1968 we were on this growth curve—all of science was. There was lots of
money. And then suddenly there wasn’t. The country is trying to fight the Vietnam War, and
they’re not going to raise taxes. Science began to not grow anymore, and funding even
decreased. We probably didn’t get as much money from the NSF as we’d gotten from the ONR.
It became more of a challenge to run Kellogg.
So Tommy is dying. I’m trying to fit in—this is now probably 1972. My marriage is
coming slightly unglued. I have three little kids, a son and two daughters. In the evening I’m
going over to sit with Tommy, telling him what’s going on in the lab, because I just sort of
inherited the day-to-day stuff. There were many more people who were more senior than I was
there. So I got tenure in ’70 and got to be a full professor in ’71, which was more or less on
schedule.
ASPATURIAN: You were promoted pretty young.
TOMBRELLO: Yeah, pretty young. There were others who got there faster. I probably got there
faster than I deserved, but that’s OK. I wasn’t complaining. The evenings with Tommy were
interesting. He had sort of been given the painkiller of choice, and the painkiller he understood
best was gin. So there was a lot of gin being poured. Part of the discussion was drinking with
Tommy, and all his old friends dropping by. Some of the old people who had been in the
weapons game—and maybe were still in the weapons game—would drop by. Everyone wanted
to see Tommy before he died. A slightly prickly saint. A brilliant man who had basically in
some ways submerged his own career to keep Kellogg running. Someone once said, “Charlie
had one son, but unfortunately it was Willy [Fowler].”
In some sense, Willy was the heir apparent to the vision of Kellogg, and Tommy—
Charlie’s son—was one of the people who kept it going. But Tommy was a brilliant man—had
humor, could figure things out, was good with people. I was always a challenge to him, because
I come with my mother’s hard edge in dealing with people, particularly people above me in the
pecking order, but not so much with people below—but certainly with people above me. We’ll
get to that again when I get to my interactions with Schlumberger and with the Caltech
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