Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
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<strong>Tombrello</strong>–49<br />
because, no surprise, they were very good. So, anyway, I had a series of very good students, but<br />
it was always something extra I was doing.<br />
And then I went to Schlumberger and came back and Physics 11 got formed. It was a<br />
different model. I thought a little bit about it and said, “I’m going to make it a contest. <strong>Caltech</strong><br />
students love contests. And they love winning contests.” That way you run a test of who’s got<br />
enough initiative to take on a problem that may not have an answer, and who’s willing to work<br />
on something that’s pretty hard when you can’t just knock it off like a homework problem.<br />
Neugebauer, who was the division chair by then, was very curious. He said, “Well, how are you<br />
going to do that?” I said, “Well, they don’t know any science. And the last thing I want to do is<br />
measure how smart their high school teachers are. I want somehow to make it somewhat<br />
independent of preparation but based on willingness to work hard, being creative,” and so the<br />
idea of the contest problems appeared. I had to come up <strong>with</strong> problems that are sort of a<br />
caricature of science. They usually require being able to get a number out of something. I think<br />
it’s very important that it’s not abstract theory. Can you take a problem that’s ill-defined and get<br />
something out of it? Don’t leave me <strong>with</strong> a page full of equations. Give me a number. And<br />
something where they can just look in any source they want. The only thing they can’t do is ask<br />
somebody how to solve the problem. They can use a person like a reference book. That’s fine,<br />
too. Not a closed-book exam—everything’s open. Use anything you can get your hands on to<br />
solve it. Give them four weeks. I know a lot of them will try to do it the last night. And a lot of<br />
the kids who applied don’t get it. They’ve never seen a problem they couldn’t work in an hour,<br />
an evening, or something.<br />
ASPATURIAN: Let’s have a few examples.<br />
TOMBRELLO: I will give you a great example. This is from 1997, so the course had been running<br />
for a while at that point. We are in Stockholm. It is early December in Stockholm. You know<br />
the story. [<strong>Tombrello</strong>’s brother-in-law, Robert Merton, was co-recipient, <strong>with</strong> Myron Scholes, of<br />
the 1997 Nobel Prize in economics.—ed .] Stephanie and I are having breakfast at the Grand<br />
Hôtel, and this person we just met, sitting at the table, has heard about the Physics 11 course. He<br />
said, “Give me an example of one of the problems.” And I said, “OK, I’ll give you the example<br />
that I used to choose the present class.” I said, “You’ve heard of John Rawls, the American<br />
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