The Institution's First Family

Shortly after meeting William E. Ritter, a University of California professor of zoology, in the summer of 1903, E. W. Scripps and a group of family and friends paid a visit to Ritter's temporary marine field laboratory on Coronado Bay, south of San Diego city. Ritter would later write of E. W., "My most vivid impression was of this unique person cruising around the laboratory to see for himself what was going on. This was probably his first sight of anything like a scientific laboratory. From table to table he went, inspecting whatever was visible."

Of the scientific venture he found himself entering, E. W. remarked, "We aren't too old to learn a good deal about biology, and I tell you it is mighty interesting."

Virginia Scripps (seated left) and Ellen Browning Scripps

E. W. had retired to San Diego in the early 1890s with a fortune made from the chain of newspapers he and his siblings published in the midwest. As a wealthy citizen, he was accustomed to being approached for donations to many causes and organizations. After one such instance, he reported the details in a letter to his newfound friend, Professor Ritter:

"I was called on the other day by a gentleman who wanted me to give to an organization so well known and well thought of that almost anybody and everybody would give to it. But [I told him] there is a little scientific concern at La Jolla...for investigating the living things of the ocean and the ocean itself. Hardly anybody knows or cares much about this. Yet sometime it may make additions to knowledge that will be of great value to the world. So I think I'd better give to it."

The "little scientific concern at La Jolla" that E. W. had decided to fund was Ritter's marine field laboratory. Financial support was provided by the Marine Biological Association of San Diego—backed by E. W., Ellen, and Virginia Scripps plus other prominent San Diego citizens including Fred Scripps, another Scripps family member residing locally. In fact, he was the largest single donor to provide construction funding for the "Little Green Lab," a first home to Ritter's marine field laboratory. The laboratory grew and moved to a new location several years later. The new facility became a permanent year-round marine biological station. It is this marine station that became the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Ellen Browning Scripps made the cover of Time magazine 1926. The editors described her as "the most beloved women in Southern California."

A third Scripps family member who supported Ritter's early efforts was E. W.'s sister Eliza Virginia Scripps. Virginia, as she was known, was an amateur naturalist with an active interest in marine biology.

She and Ellen lived together in La Jolla for more than 20 years, but they were quite different. Whereas Ellen was shy and unassuming, Virginia was something of an iconoclast and acquired a reputation for being outspoken.

According to San Diego journalist Judith Morgan, Virginia was a forceful, self-appointed warden of the community who was scrupulous in her concern for the cleanliness of La Jolla sidewalks. She would often berate litterbugs and curse landscapers who did not comply with her ideas of what the community should look like. Given to routinely swearing at men for the slightest misconduct, she defended her home on one occasion from an intruder by hurling a heavy fossil at him. Reported one La Jolla resident, "She seems to have constituted a law unto herself."

But Virginia was not all bluster. She was a dedicated collector of marine artifacts and often took young family members and their friends to the seashore to identify local marine animals and plants. It was Virginia who donated funds to the new marine station's aquarium-museum to purchase glass tanks and display cases. She and Ellen identified and hand-mounted a collection of local kelp and other algae. This historically valuable collection is housed at the San Diego Natural History Museum; samples also are maintained in the archives at Scripps.

Equally at home on horseback, mountain climbing, or striding by the sea, the adventurous Virginia died in 1921 during an around-the-world trip.

Once these three accomplished people befriended Ritter, who would become the institution's first director, the four comprised a unique team of businessman, philanthropist, naturalist, and university professor. It was a fortuitous match as they joined together to help establish and support the marine biological station that would become Scripps Institution of Oceanography.