Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–71
Graaff generators] at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, which is a part of the Carnegie
Institution, in Washington. A few people around the country were doing nuclear physics.
Charlie decided that at night, when they weren’t treating experimental patients—more about that
in a minute—they could accelerate positive ions and electrons on the positive and negative
halves of the AC voltage cycle, so they began doing nuclear physics with these machines in the
time between patients. I can’t leave out Stewart Harrison, because at some point in this period of
the 1930s, he was married to a woman named Katherine, nicknamed Kitty. The big gossip at the
time was about Kitty running away from Stewart and marrying J. Robert Oppenheimer, and
there’s lots in the Archives about that, I’m sure. There’s certainly a lot of literature about it.
There were women on campus that everyone adored, Ruth Tolman for one. There were women
that they truly all hated, and Kitty was one of the people who was not beloved by the other
wives. This is something I was told by Marge Lauritsen. You’ll have to look at her Archives
files to see what that’s about. And there are all sorts of books about that period at Caltech and
later at Los Alamos.
Anyway, Stewart Harrison would occasionally come to these parties, too. When I was
running the Radiation Safety Committee—now, this is jumping much farther ahead—I hired
Stewart to come over as a radiation consultant for the people who were handling radiation, just
thinking it would be a good idea to have a professional on the committee. I don’t think they do
that anymore. There are lots of things that they don’t do, because people try to cut costs. I hired
a radiologist, and I had an ophthalmologist who checked all the people handling radiation for
cataracts every year. That physician is still practicing. His name is Ralph Riffenburgh.
ASPATURIAN: Oh, he’s my eye doctor.
TOMBRELLO: He’s mine, too. We’re very fortunate. Ralph is still flying. He still has a plane
license. He was in World War II, and he writes novels about World War II.
ASPATURIAN: So I’ve heard.
TOMBRELLO: He does all sort of things. He’s quite an interesting man. So I used to hire him to
check everybody for cataracts every year. But I’m getting away from Stewart and the parties.
I’m trying to give you an idea of the variety of people who came. People would know there was
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