Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

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Tombrello–74 ASPATURIAN: When did that happen? Were you here at that time? TOMBRELLO: No, that was before I got here. That had been worked out probably in the mid- 1950s. ASPATURIAN: So when you arrived, Kellogg must have been riding on this crest of exciting discoveries. TOMBRELLO: Kellogg had been using a bunch of old homemade Van de Graaffs—Tommy Lauritsen had built at least two of them—and they’d just gotten a new tandem accelerator. The professors who were here were still finishing up things on the old accelerator, and I sort of jumped in and grabbed the new accelerator and all the students who’d been given projects on it. So it was an ideal time for me. I just got lucky. I got a chance to learn some of the experimental physics I hadn’t had time to learn when I was a student at Rice. I got to work with some very interesting people. Bob Bacher’s son, Andy, who is still one of my closest friends, was essentially my first real student. Kellogg was a social club, as much as it was a research institution. You knew people pretty well. You went to parties with them. It was a relatively close group. The grad students and the postdocs tended to form a slightly separate community of their own that extended beyond Friday night. There was the pool across California Street. The kids were all in swim lessons. We would all be together at the end of the day to swim. Pick up dinners at everybody’s house. Everybody had a lot of fun. It was an idyllic time for all of us, not that anyone had much money. But you didn’t need much money. It was California, and life was exciting. There were so many new things going on, and any day you could come up with a new idea and just go into the lab and do it. It was quite remarkable. That was one of the reasons why, when I went to Yale, as I explained yesterday, I realized within six months that I just wasn’t having as much fun. At Caltech I was having a tremendous amount of fun. Coming back to Kellogg meant I could go back and be a little kid again and play with toys. So I did. ASPATURIAN: Who was responsible largely for the tone, that special tone in Kellogg, do you think? http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T
Tombrello–75 TOMBRELLO: I think it must have started with Charlie Lauritsen. ASPATURIAN: And what was he like? TOMBRELLO: I was impressed by him. Of course, he was very smart and very quick. Very social. He tended to really run things when he was around. When I came back from Yale, I was still a postdoc, but they almost immediately started including me in the weekly meetings of the Kellogg faculty, and I think he was responsible for that. I was very pleased to be included. I remember one day I had an idea about something and I said what it was, being brash. And Willy jumped all over it. He trounced it; this was the dumbest idea he had heard of , and that all went on for a while, and then finally Charlie Lauritsen said very slowly, “Well, be that as it may, Willy, the kid is right.” It was my victory. I got few victories, but that was one. But then I realized that underneath it all, the rock on which Kellogg was built was Charlie Lauritsen. Charlie had the reputation of having built the lab. In the 1930s he had built the X-ray project. Anybody who was ever treated with cobalt-60 X rays—a low-energy gamma ray— probably owes a lot to the history of what was done in the Kellogg project. However, it was not a very successful project. They only used it to treat patients who were going to die anyway, and I suspect in many cases they died a little bit sooner, because in those days they didn’t know anything about the dose regime you were supposed to have. They were learning all that, and like many cancer therapies you don’t know until you’ve tried it whether it’s actually prolonging life or shortening it a bit. But people are desperate enough that they want to find a solution, and that was one of the early X-ray therapy solutions to try to cure cancer. That continued until World War II, but once Kellogg really got into nuclear physics, they lost interest in the X-ray work, partly because medically it was not an immediate success and also because nuclear physics had a lot more promise. Basically, when I got there, a lot of the equipment was just beginning to change. Some of it was like the stuff I’d seen at Rice—surplus stuff from the war. People had bought amplifiers and electronics that were really vintage 1940s, and they were just beginning to change that. So there was new equipment, new accelerators, and lots of bright young students, because there was money—in this case from the Office of Naval Research. So why would the ONR give money for our research? Well, I heard it this way from an admiral, who was one of their sponsors: “You http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T
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THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO (b. 1936) INTER
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Contact information Archives, Calif
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NOTE TO READERS Per agreement betwe
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Tombrello-iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTE
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Tombrello-vi Session 4 68-72 Colleg
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Tombrello-viii his presidency. Tomb
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Tombrello-x 206-213 Establishes (wi
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CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
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Tombrello-3 TOMBRELLO: Bisacquino.
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Tombrello-5 TOMBRELLO: This proceed
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Tombrello-7 Memphis, and I believe
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Tombrello-9 otherwise, we mostly we
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Tombrello-11 of the ability of the
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Tombrello-13 truly bigger than life
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Tombrello-15 I associated with the
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Tombrello-17 they’re probably rig
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Tombrello-19 ASPATURIAN: Your thesi
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Tombrello-21 wonderful time. And yo
Page 37 and 38: Tombrello-23 TOMBRELLO: Let me go o
Page 39 and 40: Tombrello-25 ASPATURIAN: When you s
Page 41 and 42: Tombrello-27 We did that again in t
Page 43 and 44: Tombrello-29 funding our research t
Page 45 and 46: Tombrello-31 from the NSF grant, bu
Page 47 and 48: Tombrello-33 doing great stuff, bec
Page 49 and 50: Tombrello-35 TOMBRELLO: I wasn’t
Page 51 and 52: Tombrello-37 [Morrisroe Professor o
Page 53 and 54: Tombrello-39 clearly willing to pay
Page 55 and 56: Tombrello-41 my teaching assignment
Page 57 and 58: Tombrello-43 ASPATURIAN: No. TOMBRE
Page 59 and 60: Tombrello-45 Charlie, that’s numb
Page 61 and 62: Tombrello-47 heavy ions. Jancaitis
Page 63 and 64: Tombrello-49 because, no surprise,
Page 65 and 66: Tombrello-51 of a wreck somewhere.
Page 67 and 68: Tombrello-53 concurrent computers,
Page 69 and 70: Tombrello-55 your green card.” He
Page 71 and 72: Tombrello-57 USC. She said, “My n
Page 73 and 74: Tombrello-59 video of it. Brian was
Page 75 and 76: Tombrello-61 ASPATURIAN: Without th
Page 77 and 78: Tombrello-63 ASPATURIAN: Consciousn
Page 79 and 80: Tombrello-65 Stone reported this co
Page 81 and 82: Tombrello-67 says, “That is so im
Page 83 and 84: Tombrello-69 basement was where I l
Page 85 and 86: Tombrello-71 Graaff generators] at
Page 87: Tombrello-73 groups at Chicago, and
Page 91 and 92: Tombrello-77 TOMBRELLO: Yes. I reme
Page 93 and 94: Tombrello-79 TOMBRELLO: Well, it wa
Page 95 and 96: Tombrello-81 were made up of these
Page 97 and 98: Tombrello-83 TOMBRELLO: It had a re
Page 99 and 100: Tombrello-85 ASPATURIAN: It wasn’
Page 101 and 102: Tombrello-87 Remington bronzes but
Page 103 and 104: Tombrello-89 He’d done all kinds
Page 105 and 106: Tombrello-91 side, with totally ira
Page 107 and 108: Tombrello-93 TOMBRELLO: Yes. It too
Page 109 and 110: Tombrello-95 wouldn’t have asked
Page 111 and 112: Tombrello-97 U.S. independent of fo
Page 113 and 114: Tombrello-99 own operating people a
Page 115 and 116: Tombrello-101 particularly in compa
Page 117 and 118: Tombrello-103 Six months later, “
Page 119 and 120: Tombrello-105 necessary—that was
Page 121 and 122: Tombrello-107 make things harder. A
Page 123 and 124: Tombrello-109 TOMBRELLO: It really
Page 125 and 126: Tombrello-111 it. It was clearly an
Page 127 and 128: Tombrello-113 little bit—he had h
Page 129 and 130: Tombrello-115 protons, you didn’t
Page 131 and 132: Tombrello-117 Did she have an affai
Page 133 and 134: Tombrello-119 questions. But Murray
Page 135 and 136: Tombrello-121 marvelous teacher—h
Page 137 and 138: Tombrello-123 ASPATURIAN: What I ha
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Tombrello-125 ASPATURIAN: That woul
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Tombrello-127 and all sorts of thin
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Tombrello-129 ASPATURIAN: Someone e
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Tombrello-131 DuBridge interpreted
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Tombrello-133 sciences. They were g
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Tombrello-135 candidates came and g
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Tombrello-137 TOMBRELLO: I don’t
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Tombrello-139 TOMBRELLO: Yes. But I
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Tombrello-141 opposite sides. But h
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Tombrello-143 ASPATURIAN: Now, was
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Tombrello-145 ASPATURIAN: Really? T
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Tombrello-147 TOMBRELLO: Yes. I’d
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Tombrello-149 I believe he had a vi
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Tombrello-151 to predict something
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Tombrello-175 And then in the summe
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Tombrello-177 think you need that c
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Tombrello-179 nuclear counterterror
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Tombrello-181 spoiled by that. The
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Tombrello-183 particularly the weap
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Tombrello-185 set up to prevent wea
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Tombrello-187 with those that alrea
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Tombrello-189 powered by solar. The
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Tombrello-191 TOMBRELLO: I know. I
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Tombrello-193 THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO S
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Tombrello-195 discretionary $19,000
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Tombrello-197 Lange is PMA chairman
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Tombrello-199 Witten’s here, Zewa
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Tombrello-201 There were many thing
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Tombrello-203 the key—the hallmar
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Tombrello-205 TOMBRELLO: Not exactl
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Tombrello-207 pieces of hardware th
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Tombrello-209 TOMBRELLO: It’s nic
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Tombrello-211 Wendy, until well int
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Tombrello-213 realized it was a wor
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Tombrello-215 you try for. But you
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Tombrello-217 TOMBRELLO: He did not
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Tombrello-219 ASPATURIAN: Just a re
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Tombrello-221 ASPATURIAN: How do yo
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Tombrello-223 He’s not dumb. OK.
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Tombrello-225 ASPATURIAN: And incre
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Tombrello-227 could control him. We
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Tombrello-233 down to the late stag
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Tombrello-235 THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO S
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Tombrello-237 the tandem laboratory
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Tombrello-239 picked Motorola’s 6
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Tombrello-241 ASPATURIAN: How did y
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Tombrello-243 town, staying in a ve
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Tombrello-245 TOMBRELLO: Somebody v
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Tombrello-247 years before, I’d s
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Tombrello-249 as good as you can im
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Tombrello-251 Los Alamos is a wonde
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Tombrello-253 TOMBRELLO: No. I thin
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Tombrello-255 navy, done the submar
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Tombrello-257 TOMBRELLO: —had don
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Tombrello-259 interesting people wh
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Tombrello-261 putting up a substant
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Tombrello-263 TOMBRELLO: I think so
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Tombrello-265 TOMBRELLO: There were
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Tombrello-267 at that, just to see
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Tombrello-269 ASPATURIAN: Is he ori
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Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

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