Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello

Abstract

Interview in nine sessions (December 26–December 31, 2010) with Thomas A. Tombrello, the Robert H. Goddard Professor of Physics, Caltech. Each session is organized around a central topic or theme: (1) early years through college, (2) fifty-year career overview, (3) undergraduate students, (4) Kellogg Radiation Laboratory years, (5) work with Schlumberger research laboratory, (6) Caltech people and personalities, (7) work with national weapons laboratories, (8) ten-year tenure (1998–2008) as chair of Caltech’s Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, and (9) graduate students and miscellaneous topics. Tombrello opens with his family history, youth, early life, and education, primarily in Texas and Alabama, and his undergraduate (BA 1958) and graduate (PhD 1961) years at Rice Institute. He talks at length about his years in Caltech’s Kellogg Radiation Laboratory, including his research into nuclear physics, materials science, and applied physics, and about the science, culture, people, personalities, politics, and economics of Kellogg and the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) over fifty years. There is extensive discussion of his mentoring work with Caltech undergraduate and graduate students, including his innovative undergraduate course Physics 11 and his perspectives on student life at Caltech. Of particular note is the discussion of his relationship with S. E. Koonin, who went from being Tombrello’s undergraduate advisee to his provost. Tombrello provides a wide-ranging, in-depth look at his ten years as division chair of PMA, covering research, recruitment, fundraising, collegial relationships within and beyond the division and with JPL, and the evolution of PMA under his oversight. He talks about his involvement in the design and construction of the Cahill Center for Astrophysics (dedicated in 2009) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project. He describes his interactions with five decades of Caltech presidents and provosts, institute trustees, and various donors. Tombrello recaps his two years as research director at Schlumberger research and his several decades of consulting work on weapons, national security, energy, and climate change issues at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. He talks about his foray into earthquake prediction research, his research collaborations in China, his years as Caltech’s technology assessment officer, and the emergence of entrepreneurism at Caltech in the 1990s. Anecdotes and recollections of such notable Caltech figures as R. Bacher, J. Benton, H. Brown, L. DuBridge, R. Feynman, W. A. Fowler, M. Gell-Mann, B. Kamb A. Lange, C. Lauritsen, T. Lauritsen, R. Leighton, C. Patterson, R. Sharp, and F. Zwicky are also part of this oral history