When a cannery fire spread to the Pacific Biological Laboratories in 1936, Ed Ricketts bounded out just ahead of the flames with the only two items he had time to save - a pair of pants and the bulky type-script of Between Pacific Tides.....

Edward F. Ricketts was a fine example of the idea that naturalists are born, not made. A less-promising environment, especially for a seashore biologist, could scarcely be imagined than the streets of west-side Chicago, where Ed was born on May 14, 1897.....

However, if Ed Ricketts has achieved a trace of immortality, we believe that it is because of his ability to plant in the minds of others not facts, since many can do that, but the essential truths beyond facts: the shadowy half-truths, the profoundly disturbing questions that thinking men must face and try to answer. This ability was the mature fruit of the quality that Dr. Allee saw when he noted that Ed tended sometimes to be disturbing, but was always stimulating.
1952 Joel Hedgpeth & Jack Calvin