Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–56
Nobel laureate and Caltech president 1997-2006] about Stockholm. I said, “OK, Gayle, you
have to explain.” She said, “He thinks I’m a dumb blonde.” But she got Pete elected a couple of
times. She is such a 150-watt light bulb! She just glows. It helped him. He’s the first to admit
the role Gayle has played in his career.
I don’t think Baltimore took the time to listen. Some people don’t tell you how smart
they are the first time you meet them. You just have to figure it out in what they’ve done. Gayle
is one of those people. She’s very, very smart. She came through with Shayan Mookherjea, and
he got his green card and is forever grateful to Caltech.
ASPATURIAN: I bet he is.
TOMBRELLO: Because the University of California, for some reason, couldn’t do it. But it was
as simple as having a contact with his congresswoman. Gayle says, “Well, fortunately she’s
Republican.”
ASPATURIAN: That was lucky on that particular occasion.
TOMBRELLO: Never kick luck away. So anyway, does Physics 11 miss good kids? Yes, it
misses the late bloomers. But I wanted a course where I wasn’t trading on what they’d done at
Caltech. I wanted people who were unknowns. Would I get the unknowns? And, of course, I
get a few unknowns out of high school—kids who walk in. There’s one whom I found in the
newspaper two years ago. She had her summer job taken away because she’d spoken out against
teacher layoffs in the LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District]. Aurora Ponce. When I
read this, I just wrote to the author of the article that I would give her a summer job. She was
starting UC Davis in the fall and definitely needed a summer job to help pay the costs. She had
been going to teach high school math in the Jaime Escalante program, and the district just took
that job away, because they were mad at her. I hope she had a nice summer here. People who
are in power can often do very arbitrary things to people who rock the boat. Aurora rocked the
boat. She got here every day that summer on public transportation from South L.A. I would put
a bet on her anytime. Those are the kind of people I want.
I had another high school kid who came in. He did not need a summer job, but his aunt
had called me. Gail Ellis. Her husband—Jim [James G.] Ellis—runs the business school at
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