Science
Historic Cannery Row
Edward F. Ricketts, owner-operator of Pacific Biological Laboratories, was described by a biographer as “a devoted and rational biologist who sought to uncover scientific truth.” A true renaissance man, Ricketts wrote extensively on a wide variety of subjects ranging from Bach to Buddhism.
Ricketts’s book Between Pacific Tides, coauthored with Jack Calvin in 1939, is still considered a classic of intertidal marine ecology. In 1941 he coauthored with John Steinbeck The Sea of Cortez, a study that is widely recognized as a highly influential work on holistic ecology.
Between 1930 and 1948, Ricketts and Steinbeck shared a deep and complex friendship based on mutual respect. Steinbeck cast the scientist-philosopher Ricketts as various “Doc” characters in his novels and wrote of his friend, “His mind had no horizons. He was interested in everything.”
Marker can be reached from Cannery Row.
Courtesy hmdb.org
