Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

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