Edward Flanders Ricketts

The author of such classic works as The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row, John Steinbeck is also a Nobel Prize winner and one of the most revered figures in America's literary pantheon. In 1941, Steinbeck and his close friend Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist, rented a ship and set about exploring the Gulf of California. The scientific data collected, along with Steinbeck's log of the journey, were detailed in the work Sea of Cortez.