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Ed Ricketts studied zoology at the University of Chicago and was influenced by his teacher, W. C. Allee, but Ricketts dropped out without a degree.

He was fictionalized by his friend John Steinbeck as the character, "Doc", in the novels, Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, as "Doc Burton" in In Dubious Battle, "Casy" in The Grapes of Wrath and "Doctor Winter" in The Moon is Down. Steinbeck also co-wrote the narrative portion of Sea of Cortez with Ricketts, and later wrote a short remembrance of Ricketts in an introduction to the Viking edition published as The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951, reprinted by Penguin and cited below).

From 1927 to 1948, Rickett's Pacific Biological Laboratory at 800 Ocean View Avenue in Monterey was a salon of sorts, where writers, artists and other luminaries would gather. Bruce Ariss, Joseph Campbell, Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Lincoln Steffens, and Francis Whitaker were just some of the visitors who flocked to Doc's lab.

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