Throughout his physics career, Holbrow maintained his interest in reading and writing about history. His fascination and feeling of kinship with Danish-born Caltech physicist Charles Christian Lauritsen led to a biographical article, "Charles C. Lauritsen: A Reasonable Man in an Unreasonable World," in Physics in Perspective. During a second stay at Caltech, he wrote a short history of Robert Andrews Millikan and the Kellogg Radiation Laboratory titled "The giant cancer tube and the Kellogg Radiation Laboratory," published in Physics Today.