Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–45
Charlie, that’s number one. What’s number two?” “Need to do something in elementary particle
physics.” I said, “Got a name?” “Ed Witten.” Oh, my! “That’s number two.” And I’m not the
chair, Charlie is. But we’re now telling him, “Named postdocs. Endowed.” That means a lot of
hard work for the chair. Ed Witten—Aha! [Laughter] Yes.
ASPATURIAN: He’s at Princeton, I believe.
TOMBRELLO: He’s at the Institute for Advanced Study. We will go into this whole story about
the wooing of Ed Witten later. Then third on the list was the building—a distant third. The
building had been part of the 1980s capital campaign, but we had gotten the Keck Telescopes, so
you can’t say the division should be crying about that. We may not have gotten the building, but
we got the dominant position in astronomy. At that point, they start looking for a new chair, and
because of the staffing committee—I think, as much as anything—I got picked.
So that sort of brings my professional history up to about 1998, but I think the stuff that
has happened in the last two years, since I stopped being chair, is probably best to tack onto the
session we do about being chair [Session 8], because that’s all of a piece. OK.
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T