Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–31
from the NSF grant, but it certainly means that the extra money they bring in couldn’t spread
legally into activities that weren’t covered by those other grants. We kept the accelerator
running; we had more technicians and engineers—remember, in those days you also had a bunch
of secretaries. Here I will give the second verse of the Koonin story. Back in the early 1970s,
after I had taken over Kellogg, Aage Bohr—the son of Niels Bohr—and Ben Mottelson, who
won the Nobel Prize [for physics] in 1975, told me that I needed a house theorist for Kellogg.
They were at the Bohr Institute, and they recommended somebody. I said, “He’s third-rate.”
And they said, “Better than you deserve.”
ASPATURIAN: What was behind that? That’s an odd comment.
TOMBRELLO: Well, basically, we hadn’t had a house theorist since [Robert F.] Christy [Institute
Professor of Theoretical Physics, emeritus], and Christy had moved into theoretical astrophysics
and was not really a part of Kellogg anymore. So we didn’t have a house theorist, and we
needed one.
ASPATURIAN: But, I mean, to say, “Oh, well, a third-rater is better than you deserve,” —
TOMBRELLO: Yes. I said, “Well, I’ll grow one,” and they laughed at me. I made a prophecy. I
said, “I’m going to grow one. And the first thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to try to
hire him from me.” And I had this very bright undergrad named Steve Koonin, and I started
plotting his future. He was ready for graduate school. I talked to the people at MIT. They had a
very good bunch of nuclear theorists. I had no trouble getting him in. His grades were
spectacular. He was spectacular.
ASPATURIAN: He got out very quick, too, I believe, from MIT—in three years.
TOMBRELLO: He was a three-year PhD. He worked on probably three things that could have
been a PhD. In the summers, he would go to Los Alamos and we would climb mountains
together. I wanted to stay in touch, because the plan was to bring him back here. By the summer
or fall of ’75, he was back here, and the Bohr Institute immediately made him an offer and tried
to get him away from me. So I was right. They invited him and I hired him, and I have never
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