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Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts (May 14, 1897 – May 11, 1948) was an American marine biologist, ecologist, and philosopher. Renowned as the inspiration for the character Doc in John Steinbeck's 1945 novel Cannery Row, Rickett's professional reputation is rooted in Between Pacific Tides (1939), a pioneering study of intertidal ecology. A friend and mentor of Steinbeck, they collaborated on and co-authored the book, Sea of Cortez (1941). Eleven years later, and just three years after the death of Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck reprinted the narrative portion of their coauthored book with a new publisher, with Steinbeck removing Ed as coauthor, adding a biography of Ed Ricketts and re-titling the book The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1946). Steinbeck also added a eulogy for Ricketts, but it was met with public backlash. Gwyn Conger Steinbeck, the writer's second wife, thought highly of Ricketts. She said, "There was such a special magic about Ed Ricketts, and, in many ways he was John's offspring; he was the source of the Steinbeck Nile." Life Ricketts was born in Chicago to Abbott Ricketts and Alice Beverly Flanders Ricketts. He had a younger sister Frances and a younger brother Thayer. His sister Frances (Ricketts) Strong said he had a mind like a dictionary and was often in trouble for correcting teachers and other adults. Ricketts spent most of his childhood in Chicago, except for a year in South Dakota when he was age 10. After a year of college, Ricketts traveled to Texas and New Mexico. In 1917, he was drafted into the Army Medical Corps. He hated the military bureaucracy, but according to John Steinbeck, "was a successful soldier". After discharge from the army, Ricketts studied zoology at the University of Chicago. He was influenced by his professor W.C. Allee, but dropped out without taking a degree. He then spent several months walking through the American south, from Indiana to Florida. He used material from this trip to publish an article in Travel magazine titled "Vagabonding Through Dixie". He returned to Chicago and studied some more at the university. In 1922, Ricketts met and married Anna Barbara Makar, daughter of Croatian immigrants- Marija Piskuric (married as Mary Makar) and Miho (Michael) Makar. As a private person, Anna often went by other names of Nancy and Barbara, and Ricketts was known to call her Nan. Anna was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1900. Ricketts and Makar married in Chicago, Illinois in 1922, and one year later, they had a son, Edward F. Ricketts, Jr. and moved to California to set up Pacific Biological Laboratories with Albert E. Galigher: Galigher was Ricketts' college friend with whom he had run a similar business on a smaller scale. In 1924, Ricketts became sole owner of the lab, and soon two daughters were born: Nancy Jane on November 28, 1924, and Cornelia on April 6, 1928. Between 1925 and 1927, Ricketts' sister Frances and both his parents moved to California; Frances and their father Abbott worked with Ricketts at the lab. In late 1930 Ricketts met aspiring writer John Steinbeck and his wife Carol, who had moved to Pacific Grove earlier in the year. For more than a year, Carol worked half-time for Ricketts at the lab until 1932 when Ricketts' wife Nan left, taking their two daughters, and Ricketts no longer had enough money to pay Carol's salary. Steinbeck also spent time at the lab, learning marine biology, helping Ricketts preserve specimens and talking about philosophy. Steinbeck lived very near the lab. What kept them together was the discovery that each had an almost boundless curiosity about almost everything, and that their personality meshed so well. Steinbeck had a need to give, and Ricketts a need to receive. Ricketts made listening an art. At one point in Steinbeck's life, he suffered an "overwhelming emotional upset" and went to the lab to stay with Ricketts. Ricketts played music for Steinbeck until he could bear to come back to himself. Nan's separation from Ricketts in 1932 was the first of many separations. In 1936, Ricketts and Nan separated for good, and he lived in his lab. On November 25, 1936, a fire spread from the adjacent cannery, destroying the lab. Ricketts lost nearly everything, including an extraordinary amount of correspondence, research notes, manuscripts, and his prized library, which had held everything from invaluable scientific resources to his beloved collection of poetry. However, the manuscript of Ricketts' textbook (with Jack Calvin) Between Pacific Tides had been sent to the publisher. John Steinbeck would become a silent 50% partner in the lab, after funding its reconstruction costs. In 1940, Ricketts and Steinbeck journeyed to the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) in a chartered fishing boat to collect invertebrates for the scientific catalog in their book, Sea of Cortez. Also in 1940, Ricketts began a relationship with Eleanor Susan Brownell Anthony "Toni" Solomons Jackson, who became his common-law wife. As Steinbeck's secretary, Jackson helped edit The Log from the Sea of Cortez. Jackson, who had attended the University of California, Los Angeles, was the daughter of Katherine Gray Church and Theodore Solomons, an explorer and early member of the Sierra Club, who had discovered and defined the John Muir Trail. Jackson and her young daughter Katherine Adele moved in with Ricketts and lived with him until 1947. In addition to Steinbeck, their circle of friends included the novelist and painter Henry Miller and the mythologist, writer, and lecturer Joseph Campbell. During World War II, Ricketts again served in the Army, this time as a medical lab technician; he was drafted in October 1942, missing the age cut-off by days. During his service, he kept collecting marine life and compiling data. His son was drafted in 1943. In 1945, Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row was published. Ricketts, the model for "Doc" became a celebrity, and tourists and journalists began seeking him out. Steinbeck portrayed "Doc" (and thus, Ricketts) as a many-faceted intellectual who was somewhat outcast from intellectual circles, a party-loving drinking man, in close touch with the working class and with the prostitutes and bums of Monterey's Cannery Row. Steinbeck wrote of "Doc": "He wears a beard and his face is half Christ and half satyr and his face tells the truth." Ricketts himself read Cannery Row with exasperation, by all accounts, but ended saying simply that it could not be criticized because it had not been written with malice. Ricketts was also portrayed as "Doc" in Sweet Thursday, the sequel to Cannery Row; as "Friend Ed" in Burning Bright; as "Doc Burton" in In Dubious Battle; as Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath; and as "Doctor Winter" in The Moon Is Down. In September 1946, Ricketts' daughter Nancy Jane had a son, making Ricketts a grandfather. That same year, the health of his stepdaughter Kay deteriorated due to a brain tumor; she died the following year on October 5, 1947. Kay's mother,.... Discover the John Steinbeck Richard Astro popular books. Find the top 100 most popular John Steinbeck Richard Astro books.