Ed Ricketts

Ricketts' laboratory on Cannery Row

Edward "Ed" Flanders Robb Ricketts (born May 14, 1897 in Chicago , † May 11, 1948 ) in Monterey was an American marine biologist and philosopher . He was also known as a friend of John Steinbeck , whose thinking he significantly influenced and who gave him a. a. in the character of "Doc" in the novels The Street of Sardines and Happy Thursday has set literary monuments.

Life

Ed Ricketts was born in Chicago, began studying in Illinois , but soon left university to travel. He served in an Army Medical Corps during World War I and then returned to university, this time to Chicago, but left without a degree. In 1922 he undertook a long hike that led him across the former southern states to Florida and about which he published the article Vagabonding Through Dixie in Traveler magazine (6/1925) in 1925 .

From 1923 he lived in California , where he opened the Pacific Biological Laboratories in Pacific Grove , a marine laboratory that supplied schools, universities and other institutions with biological preparations. The company and owners moved several times, from Pacific Grove to Carmel and finally to Monterey. In the laboratory there was also Rickett's apartment, where Joseph Campbell and Henry Miller, among others, were regular guests. In 1930 he met the young, then unknown author John Steinbeck, whom he temporarily employed in his laboratory and with whom he soon became deeply friends.

The Pacific Biological Laboratories fell victim to a fire in 1936 that also destroyed numerous manuscripts and Ed Rickett's private library. Fortunately, he had already sent the manuscript of his marine biology book Between Pacific Tides to Stanford University for printing . The first edition of this work, which is still used today as a standard manual at various universities, appeared in 1939. The Sea of ​​Cortez (1941) was the result of a joint research trip with Steinbeck to the Gulf of California . In later editions, Ricketts' research, which makes up an essential part of this book, was temporarily pushed into the background, but was later returned to its original place.

After Ricketts' marriage to his first wife Anna, with whom he had three children, failed, he lived with Toni Jackson before he married Alice Campbell in early 1948. He died a few months later after his car was hit by a train. Another planned trip with John Steinbeck did not materialize.

Although Ricketts never reconstructed many manuscripts that were burned in 1936, a collection of his scholarly works was published in 1978 under the title The Outer Shores . Two of the species he discovered, the spider crab Pycnogonum rickettsi and the Catriona rickettsi were named after him, as was the boat "RV Ed Ricketts" and the "Ricketts Row" in Pacific Grove.

Ricketts as a literary figure

Ed Ricketts and his Pacific Biological Laboratories can be found in the novels Cannery Row ( Cannery Row ) and Sweet Thursday ( blissful Thursday ) again. Steinbeck depicts the main character Doc based on his friend's example. As a writer, he was aware that this image was mostly his own idea of ​​Ricketts, not the real person. Hence the dedication to Sardine Street : “To Ed Ricketts; He knows why, maybe not ”(" For Ed Ricketts who knows why or should. ").

Figures in other works by Steinbeck are also inspired by Ed Ricketts. This applies to the characters of Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath (The Fruits of Wrath ), Doctor Burton in In Dubious Battle ( Stormy Harvest ) or Doctor Winter in The Moon is Down ( The Moon went down ).