Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–48
ASPATURIAN: So not SURF [Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships] students, for
instance—
TOMBRELLO: SURF didn’t quite exist at that point. But that’s a good story, too. I had these
incredibly bright students all at once. At this point, Jancaitis is still working for me, because he
was in the same class as Polchinski and Zajc. Weaver and Koonin are gone. Koonin’s gone off
to MIT, because I’m going to get him back as the house theorist at Kellogg. But I’ve got too
many of these kids to support, and I want to keep them all for the summer. I go to Harold Brown
[Caltech president 1969-1977], my president. [Lee A.] DuBridge was a great president [1946-
69] of Caltech. I knew DuBridge and I used to talk to him. But Harold Brown was kind of my
president. I can be very candid, and he could be extremely candid with me. Like he could say
no. But see, that was the great thing about Harold Brown. You came to him with an idea. He
might say no, and you knew it was “No.” You’d never have to worry about it again. But if he
said yes, he’d say yes right then, and you knew the check was in the mail. So I mentioned to him
these students and how I wanted some money for the summer to pay them. In those days you
paid them so little. And he said yes. Hey, done! And he says, “But I might have Morrisroe look
into getting you some support someplace else. I can’t keep doing this.”
ASPATURIAN: [David] Morrisroe being the finance guy [vice president for business and finance]
at that point.
TOMBRELLO: They got money for me from the Richter Foundation. So I was running a summer
thing with Richter Foundation funding, and then, later, when Murph [Marvin L. Goldberger,
Caltech president 1978-87] is here, and Fred [Fredrik H.] Shair [professor of chemical
engineering, 1976-89] started SURF, I decided that rather than have two of these things
competing with each other I would just throw the Richter money into SURF. That’s my SURF
story. I’ve never had very many SURF students—I’ve had a few—but I always had students of
my own that were paid for by something or other. Harold Brown basically made a lot of the
future happen. And Murph inherited at least one tiny little bit of what supported SURF.
They’ve kept the Richter money, and it’s still supporting part of SURF. Morrisroe found it for
me, and I always tried to keep him happy. I told him about how good the students were,
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