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