John Pearse, PhD

JOHN PEARSE is Professor Emeritus in Biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is also Research Professor in the Physical and Biological Sciences-Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department of the Institute of Marine Sciences. 

John taught at UCSC for 22 years before retiring. Though retired for the last 22 years, John continues to stay active in the field of marine biology.

He was born in Boise, Idaho where his father was stationed as an experimental agronomist with the United States Forest Service. John’s family moved from there to Utah where they stayed for five years. Their next move was to Washington, DC where his father was stationed for another five years. During that period, John spent a lot of time at the Washington Museum, the Botanical Gardens, and out and about in the field. He notes with a smile that he was a naturalist from the very beginning.

The family’s next move was to Tuscon, Arizona where John spent his formative years. During that period, he worked at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. As a high school kid, John was hired to build the trails and take care of the animals before the museum opened. He always thought he was going to be a desert biologist.

But after their time in Tuscon, his father worked for the State Department with his first assignment in Egypt. John attended the American University in Cairo for a year in 1954-55. During this period, John spent time at sea, and his father had a station on the coast of the Mediterranean, where John spent a good part of the summer snorkeling and discovering marine biology.

But the American University did not offer courses in biology. John’s father came from Chicago, got his masters degree there, but then left Chicago as soon as he could. He hoped that as an alumnus of the University in Chicago, John might be able to get a Fellowship, and he could stay with his uncle who lived there. John followed in his father’s footsteps attending the University of Chicago for his last three years of undergraduate work, where he got his Bachelor’s degree.

Even though most of the students at the school were in pre-med – only three graduated in zoology – the University wanted John to stay for graduate work. But he wanted to go into marine biology.

John applied to several schools and ended up at Stanford, where he was able to take classes at their Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove. He took a seminar class in reproduction of marine invertebrates. Fascinated by the questions surrounding invertebrate reproduction, where temperature rules the timing of reproduction, John took the opportunity to study in Antarctica, where Stanford had a contract. John did his thesis there on the reproductive cycles of sea stars and he’s worked with echinoderms ever since.

His academic career took many turns following the travels of his early years. He taught at the American University in Cairo for two years, working on reproductive cycles of animals in the Red Sea. The Six-Day War sent him packing. He considers that to have been one of the luckiest things to happen to him.

John’s first wife was from Southern CA, so they went to live there, but the American University paid him for a year as they wanted him back as soon as it was safe. John had a friend at the California Institute of Technology lab, and was invited to work there for the year. Things still weren’t settled in the Middle East at the end of that year, and John was offered a position by another friend to work on sea urchins.

The next turn came when he got an offer from Todd Newberry (they were grad students together) who was teaching invertebrate biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Newberry wanted a break and asked John to teach his class.  Richard Peterson, one of the other founding faculty members in biology at UCSC, had started to work out at Año Nuevo, as a behavioral pinniped biologist.  Following Peterson’s death, John got his position. He then taught at UCSC for 22 years.