Wheeler J. North
| Wheeler James North | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
January 2, 1922 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Died | December 20, 2002 (aged 80) Newport Beach, California, United States |
| Residence | Orange County, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Biological Oceanography, Marine ecology |
| Institutions | Scripps Institution of Oceanography, California Institute of Technology |
| Alma mater | California Institute of Technology, University of California |
| Doctoral advisor | Denis Fox |
| Known for | kelp forest ecology |
| Spouse | Dr. Barbara Best North Ph.D., M.D. (m. 1964) |
| Children | Wheeler J. North, Jr. |
Wheeler James North (January 2, 1922 – December 20, 2002), born in San Francisco, California, was a marine biologist and environmental scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the California Institute of Technology. He is best known for his pioneering work to understand the ecology of California’s coastal kelp forests, and pioneering work in biomass fuels and the sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
North was born January 2, 1922 in San Francisco to Wheeler O. and Florence (Ross) North, and grew up at a mining camp at La Fe in Zacatecas, Mexico, as his father was a mining engineer and his mother was an assay chemist. In 1927, the family moved to La Jolla, California. In 1940 North graduated from The Thacher School in Ojai, California and entered college at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). While still in college in December 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, which allowed him to complete his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1944. After training in U.S. Army Officers Candidate School at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps and assigned to the Philippines. However, he arrived in Southeast Asia after VJ Day in August 1945 but stayed in the Philippines and Japan as part of the American occupying forces until August 1946. After two years working with the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory in San Diego, North returned to Caltech in September 1948 and completed a second bachelor's degree in biology in 1950. He earned masters and Ph.D. degrees in Biological Oceanography at the University of California Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1953 studying in the laboratory of Denis Fox. He undertook postdoctoral work with a National Science Foundation fellowship at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and Cambridge University in England.
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