Thomas Dombeck

Tom Dombeck, an innovative and versatile physicist and scientific project manager, passed away in Kāneʻohe, Hawaii at the age of 71. Tom’s legacy includes many measurements in particle physics, the development of new techniques for the production of ultra-cold neutrons, and substantial contributions to the project management of several major scientific projects.

Tom received a BA in physics from Columbia University in 1967 and a PhD in particle physics from Northwestern University in 1972. He was a research associate at Imperial College, London (1972-1974); visiting scientist, Dubna, USSR (1975); assistant and associate professor of physics at the University of Maryland (1976-1981); staff physicist, technical project manager, research scientist and construction project manager at Los Alamos National Laboratory (1981-1988); detailee at the DOE/Office of the SSC in Washington, DC (1988-1989); staff physicist, director of detector R&D funding, string test machine leader, deputy project manager for operations at the SSC Laboratory (1989-1994); project manager for Sloan Digital Sky Survey at the University of Chicago (1994-1997); deputy head for technical division at Fermilab (1997-1999); project manager for Next Linear Collider at Fermilab (2000-2002); project manager for the Pan-STARRS telescope (2003-06) at the University of Hawaii and affiliated graduate faculty member there (2006-2016).

Tom began his scientific research with bubble chambers and was a key participant in the experiment that observed the first neutrino interaction in a hydrogen filled bubble chamber, in 1970 at the ZGS at Argonne National Laboratory. For many years, Tom pursued measurements of the electric Dipole Moment (EDM) of the neutron. He was involved in the development of ultra cold neutrons by Doppler shifting at pulsed sources with equipment implemented at the ZING-P source at Argonne and at LANSCE at Los Alamos.

Tom proposed a new method for a neutron EDM measurement that involved Bragg-scattering polarized neutrons from a silicon crystal. He led an initial effort at the Missouri University Research Reactor and then initiated an experiment using the reactor at the NIST Center for Neutron Research. The experiment measured the induced rotation of the neutron’s magnetic dipole moment after multiple Bragg reflections in the electric field of a slotted silicon crystal.

While at LANL, Tom led a neutrino-oscillation search that involved constructing a new beamline and neutrino source at LAMPF and provided improved limits on muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillations. He carried these fundamental physics interests and abilities to his later work as a very effective scientific project manager, having assignments for large projects with the Superconducting Super Collider (he brought the string test program in under budget and before deadline), at Fermilab, for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the Pan-STARRS project in Hawaii. As an example of his skills and sense of humor: Pan-STARRS was under pressure to deliver on a very rapid timescale. Tom’s solution was to recruit from faculty at the Institute for Astronomy—which he famously characterized as “a collection of entrepreneurs held together by a common janitorial system"—to lead the various subsystems. With this approach, he very successfully kickstarted the project, and it is in operation today.

Tom was able to see the connections between disparate scientific areas and bring together new ideas and approaches that resulted in advances. He could inspire people around him with his enthusiasm and kindness. His wry sense of humor and wicked smile were trademarks that will long be remembered by his friends and colleagues. Tom was a devoted family man and is missed greatly by his wife, Bonnie, his two children, Daniel and Heidi, and his four grandchildren.