North, Wheeler J.

Biography

Wheeler J. North, Caltech alumnus and Professor of Environmental Engineering, 1963-1992, was a marine biologist and ecologist as well as a pioneer in scientific SCUBA diving. He was born in 1922 in San Francisco and spent his childhood in Mexico and La Jolla, California. After attending Caltech as an undergraduate (BS, engineering, 1944), he joined the army for the US occupation of Japan, during which time he became interested in biology. After returning to Caltech for a second degree (BS, biology, 1950), he entered graduate school at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where he received his PhD in 1953. In the following years he remained at Scripps, beginning a long-term study of giant kelp and becoming an expert SCUBA diver. He became an authority on kelp and the renewal of kelp beds of the California coast, as well as on marine resources and biomass. In 1963 he was appointed professor at Caltech, where he taught marine ecology and continued his kelp studies. Wheeler North died in 2002.