The Making of a Marine Biologist: Ed Ricketts

Edward F. Ricketts (1897–1948) transformed marine biology on the west coast of North America. And, remarkably, he propelled the emergence of important new perspectives on coastal biology and ecology without ever publishing a professional academic research paper. He played an important role in the emergence of marine ecology as a scientific discipline and a career option for young biologists. Environmentalism, as we know it today, did not exist in the 1930s and 1940s, and the field of ecology itself was still a fairly obscure scientific discipline (Hedgpeth 1978a; Lannoo 2010). Ricketts was engaging with both ecology (the science) and environmentalism (the personal philosophy) at a pivotal point in time. He was a pioneer who explored ecology’s many facets and implications in remarkable ways. His life was a web of interconnectedness and it reflected his view that everyone and everything is inextricably linked to everything else.

Ricketts’s impact stems largely from his two landmark books, Between Pacific Tides and Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, but he and his ideas powerfully influenced many others—including Nobel laureate John Steinbeck and renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell— and his ideas continue to influence scientists, writers, artists, and musicians today. Ed loved teaching, and his ideas and writing continue to teach us, even 72 years after his death. His legacy is inextricably intertwined with that of celebrated author John Steinbeck, with whom he forged a deep friendship and intellectual collaboration grounded in shared ideas about science, art, nature, and humanity that were groundbreaking for their time. An understanding of the intellectual and professional development of either of these great men cannot be achieved without reflecting on their close friendship.

Early Years

Ricketts was fascinated by natural history from an early age (Rodger 2002, 2015; Kohrs, this volume). Katharine Rodger (2002) notes that he was, “from birth, a child of intelligence and rare charm…. He began speaking very young and began using whole but simple sentences before he was a year old.” His family lived in Mitchell, South Dakota, during his formative years and he spent much of his time outdoors exploring nature (Rodger 2006). In a letter to D. M. Clay, Ricketts once said, “At the age of six, I was ruined for any ordinary activities when an uncle….gave me some natural history curios and an old zoology textbook. There I saw for the first time those magical and incorrect words, ‘coral insects’ ” (Ricketts, undated, in Rodger 2002).

Ricketts’s college education proceeded in fits and starts. He did not consider formal (school) learning a necessity and never graduated from a university. Learning seems to have been his university goal, not degree-getting. Even so, he placed high value on knowledge and learning in general, and passionately drove himself in that direction.

His university studies began at Illinois State Normal School in 1915, where he took three courses in zoology before dropping out to “explore the country” and try his hand at various jobs in Texas and New Mexico. According to Joel Hedgpeth (1978b), he left school to “escape” an affair with an older, married woman. In September 1917, the army drafted Ed and he clerked in the Medical Corps at Camp Grant, Illinois. The World War I armistice prompted his March 1919 discharge and he enrolled at the University of Chicago. Like all new college students, Ricketts spent the next two years satisfying academic prerequisites. Then, he dropped out again to “take a walk.” He passed November and December of 1920 strolling from Indianapolis, Indiana, to Savannah, Georgia—a distance of nearly 800 miles—to escape from what John McCosker (1995) claimed was another dalliance with an older, married woman (Hedgpeth 1978a; Rodger 2002). Four years later, Ricketts published an account of that trip in the June 1925 issue of Travel magazine (“Vagabonding through Dixie,” Ricketts 1925).

Ricketts returned to the University of Chicago in 1921, taking courses in biology and psychology (Hedgpeth 1995). In the fall of 1922 he took a course from pioneering animal ecologist Warder Clyde Allee, who imbued Ed with...