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Trailblazing marine biologist, visionary conservationist, deep ecology philosopher, Edward F. Ricketts (1897–1948) has reached legendary status in the California mythos. A true polymath and a thinker ahead of his time, Ricketts was a scientist who worked in passionate collaboration with many of his friends—artists, writers, and influential intellectual figures—including, perhaps most famously, John Steinbeck, who once said that Ricketts's mind “had no horizons.” This collection, featuring previously unpublished pieces as well as others available for the first time in their original form, reflects the wide scope of Ricketts's scientific, philosophical, and literary interests during the years he lived and worked on Cannery Row in Monterey, California. These writings, which together illuminate the evolution of Ricketts's unique, holistic approach to science, include “Verbatim transcription of notes on the Gulf of California trip,” the basic manuscript for Steinbeck's and Ricketts's “Log from the Sea of Cortez”; the essays “The Philosophy of Breaking Through” and “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry”; several shorter pieces on topics including collecting invertebrates and the impact of modernization on Mexican village life; and more. This critical biography, with a number of rare photographs, offers a new, detailed view of Ricketts's life.

The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ), located on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is a leading center of herpetological research in the United States. This book offers a brief account of the principal figures associated with the collection and of the most important events in the history of herpetology in the MVZ during its first 93 years, and lists all type specimens of recent amphibians and nonavian reptiles in the collection. Although the MVZ has existed since 1908, until 1945 there was no formal curator for the collection of amphibians and nonavian reptiles. Since that time Robert C. Stebbins, David B. Wake, Harry W. Greene, Javier A. Rodrìguez-Robles (in an interim capacity), and Craig Moritz have served in that position. The herpetological collection of the MVZ was begun on March 13, 1909, with a collection of approximately 430 specimens from southern California and, as of December 31, 2001, contained 232,254 specimens. Taxonomically, the collection is strongest in salamanders, accounting for 99,176 specimens, followed by “lizards” (squamate reptiles other than snakes and amphisbaenians, 63,439), frogs (40,563), snakes (24,937), turtles (2,643), caecilians (979), amphisbaenians (451), crocodilians (63), and tuataras (3). Whereas the collection's emphasis historically has been on the western United States, and on California in particular, representatives of taxa from many other parts of the world are present. The 1,765 type specimens in the MVZ comprise 120 holotypes, three neotypes, three syntypes, and 1,639 paratopotypes and paratypes; 83 of the holotypes were originally described as full species. Of the 196 amphibian and nonavian reptilian taxa represented by type material, most were collected in México (63) and California, USA (54).

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus publicly defended his hypothesis that the Earth is a planet and the sun a body resting near the center of a finite universe. But why did Copernicus make this bold proposal? And why did it matter? This book reframes this pivotal moment in the history of science, centering the story on a conflict over the credibility of astrology that erupted in Italy just as Copernicus arrived in 1496. Copernicus engendered enormous resistance when he sought to protect astrology by reconstituting its astronomical foundations. The book shows that efforts to answer the astrological skeptics became a crucial unifying theme of the early modern scientific movement. Its interpretation of this “long sixteenth century,” from the 1490s to the 1610s, offers a new framework for understanding the great transformations in natural philosophy in the century that followed.

Designed as a textbook, this volume is an up-to-date survey in ecology of freshwater and estuarine wetlands. Prominent wetland scholars address the physical environment, geomorphology, biogeochemistry, soils, and hydrology of both freshwater and estuarine wetlands. Careful syntheses review how hydrology and chemistry constrain wetlands plants and animals. In addition, contributors document the strategies employed by plants, animals, and bacteria to cope with stress. Focusing on the ecology of key organisms, each chapter is relevant to wetland regulation and assessment, wetland restoration, how flood pulses control the ecology of most wetland complexes, and how human regulation of flood pulses threatens wetland biotic integrity.

Talk of genetically engineered organisms (GEOs) has moved from the hushed corridors of life science corporations to the front pages of the world's major newspapers. As Europeans began rejecting genetically engineered foods in the marketplace, the StarLink corn incident exploded in the United States and farmers set fire to genetically modified crops in India. Citizens and consumers have become increasingly aware of and troubled by the issues surrounding these new technologies. Considering cases from agriculture, food, forestry, and pharmaceuticals, this book examines some of the most pressing questions raised by genetic engineering. What determines whether GEOs enter the food supply, and how are such decisions being made? How is the biotechnology industry using its power to reshape food, fiber, and pharmaceutical production, and how are citizen-activists challenging these initiatives? What are the social and political consequences of global differences over GEOs?

The first edition of this book explores the long and unsettled history of eugenics in the United States. This expanded second edition includes shocking details demonstrating that eugenics continues to inform institutional and reproductive injustice. The author draws on recently uncovered historical records to reveal patterns of racial bias in California's sterilization program and documents compelling individual experiences. The book presents reasons to challenge the prevailing historical understanding of eugenics and its underlying assumptions about time, place, and thematic relevance. It covers the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915; draws connections between colonial medicine and eugenics along the US–Mexican border; explores the emergence of the eugenics movement in California from 1900 to the 1940s; examines the patterns and experiences of eugenic sterilization in state institutions; discusses the relationship between nature-making and eugenics in California; and provides a brief overview of the criticisms leveled at eugenics from the early decades of the twentieth century to midcentury. With the addition of radically new and relevant research, this edition connects the eugenic past to the genomic present with attention to the ethical and social implications of emerging genetic technologies.

Patterns in Nature is a collection of eleven new essays. The work is an attempt to articulate an intellectual agenda for the study of the conceptual foundations of systematics and taxonomy in a way that connects classification with larger historical themes in the biological sciences, including morphology, experimental and observational approaches, evolution, biogeography, debates over form and function, character transformation, and biodiversity. The volume has two overarching themes. The first is to throw light on the current state of systematics by understanding the details of its history and the history of closely related disciplines and debates. The second theme is to provide enough of the details about the chronology and changes in concepts and contexts that a new generation of researchers will have a framework for taking up questions. While evolutionary systematics represents an important chapter in the recent history of biology, the rise of cladistics in the 1970s and 1980s argues for attention to Willi Hennig and his forerunners, collaborators, interlocutors, and critics. In an attempt to fill in a largely unwritten history and a lacuna in the conceptual map of modern systematics, Patterns in Nature features discussions of the work of Adolf Naef, Walter Zimmermann, Leon Croizat, Lars Brundin, and Colin Patterson, among others. This book also asks after the future of systematics, with chapters that discuss some recent and new additions to theory and practice that technology has made possible.

This book chronicles the creation and early history of the Salk Institute, a private biomedical sciences research institute in La Jolla, CA. It covers about twenty years, from 1955, the year of the successful development of the polio vaccine by Jonas Salk, to the mid-1970s. It recounts how, with the support of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (the March of Dimes) and a gift of land from the city of San Diego, Salk founded a pioneering institute of molecular biology. He attracted a stellar faculty and a remarkable architect, Louis Kahn. The background and war experiences of the founders are woven into the genesis of the Salk Institute. Their lives were intertwined from Europe, the South Pacific, and Japan to Los Alamos and the American Midwest. The birth of the Salk Institute was plagued by financial and governance crises and by incidents that reflected the political and social events of the post–World War II period, including the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the counterculture movement. An interesting attempt at considering the role of biology in human affairs is remembered and found to have left a lasting legacy. In the mid-1970s, a change in governance marked a new era and the end of the institute’s genesis.

Aldo Leopold and Edward F. Ricketts are giants in the history of environmental awareness. They were born ten years and only about 200 miles apart and died within weeks of each other in 1948. Yet they never met and they didn't read each other's work. This book reveals the full extent of their profound and parallel influence both on science and our perception of the natural world today. It shows how deeply these two ecological luminaries influenced the emergence both of environmentalism and conservation biology. In particular, it looks closely at how they each derived their ideas about the possible future of humanity based on their understanding of natural communities. Leopold and Ricketts both believed that humans cannot place themselves above earth's ecosystems and continue to survive. In light of climate change, invasive species, and collapsing ecosystems, their most important shared idea emerges as a powerful key to the future.

At a time when women could not vote, and very few were involved in the world outside the home, Annie Montague Alexander (1867–1950) was an intrepid explorer, amateur naturalist, skilled markswoman, philanthropist, farmer, and founder and patron of two natural history museums at the University of California, Berkeley. This book presents a luminous portrait of this remarkable woman—a pioneer who helped shape the world of science in California, yet whose name has been little known until now. Alexander's father founded a Hawaiian sugar empire, and his great wealth afforded his adventurous daughter the opportunity to pursue her many interests. The author portrays Alexander as a complex, intelligent, woman who—despite her frail appearance—was determined to achieve something with her life. Along with Louise Kellogg, her partner of forty years, Alexander collected thousands of animal, plant, and fossil specimens throughout western North America. Their collections serve as an invaluable record of the flora and fauna that were beginning to disappear as the West succumbed to spiraling population growth, urbanization, and agricultural development. Today, at least seventeen taxa are named for Alexander, and several others honor Kellogg, who continued to make field trips after Alexander's death. Alexander's dealings with scientists, and her encouragement—and funding—of women to do field research, earned her much admiration, even from those with whom she clashed. Her legacy endures in the fields of zoology and paleontology, and also in the lives of women who seek to follow their own star to the fullest degree possible.

In 1633, at the end of one of the most famous trials in history, the Inquisition condemned Galileo for contending that the Earth moves and that the Bible is not a scientific authority. Galileo's condemnation set off a controversy that has acquired a fascinating life of its own and that continues to this day. This book examines the entire span of the Galileo affair from his condemnation to his alleged rehabilitation by the Pope in 1992. Filled with primary sources, many translated into English for the first time, the book aims to acquaint readers with the historical facts of the trial, its aftermath and repercussions, the rich variety of reflections on it throughout history, and the main issues it raises.