Irene McCulloch, 101; Marine Biologist
Irene McCulloch, a USC biological sciences professor whose entreaties to a multimillionaire landowner and banker 47 years ago brought about the G. Allan Hancock Foundation for Marine Research, died last Saturday at the age of 101.
She had retired from teaching in 1953 but continued to do research and writing at the USC campus, where she first arrived in 1924 after working since 1913 as a graduate assistant in zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, and later teaching at Occidental College and Tulane University.
When she joined the USC faculty, the marine research department consisted of one 14-foot skiff and a laboratory and lecture room built in 1880.
She prevailed on Hancock, heir to the land holdings of his father Henry Hancock and a merchant marine captain and ocean photography pioneer, to finance the foundation named for him. It now consists of a library of biology and oceanography, modern laboratories, a museum, auditorium and dining facility and numerous marine specimens.
“We wanted to know what is in the Pacific Ocean,” Miss McCulloch said when asked the purpose of her efforts.
In 1969, some of her former students and colleagues established a foundation for marine biology research and education in her honor, and in 1971 the Los Angeles City Council honored her for “a lifetime of teaching and scientific research.”
Her final book on single-celled ocean organisms called foraminifera, which took her 25 years to prepare, was published when she was 94.
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