Medical entomologist Raymond Ryckman, PhD, helped put Loma Linda University on the map as an institution contributing valuable research to medical science. The Loma Linda legend passed away July 18 at the age of 99.
After finishing a bachelor’s degree in zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1950, Ryckman was recruited to Loma Linda University for a faculty research position in the newly established School of Tropical and Preventive Medicine (forerunner of today’s School of Public Health). At the request of the United States Army, he began researching transmission dynamics of the plague as part of the Army’s effort to keep troops safe and healthy while stationed in Southeast Asia. His funded research efforts played a major role in the understanding of plague transmission and control, and it is still cited today.
After this grant ended in 1955, Ryckman returned to UC Berkeley to complete a master’s degree and PhD. His doctoral research focused on the insect Triatoma protracta, which carries and spreads the parasite responsible for Chagas disease, Trypanosoma cruzi. His dissertation was published in 1962.
In 1960, Ryckman joined the Loma Linda University School of Medicine department of medical microbiology. He taught and conducted research at Loma Linda University until his retirement in 1987. Other research interests besides triatomine insects included cactiphilic flies and lizard mites.
In honor of his research, Ryckman was honored in 1972 when a triatomine was named after him: Triatoma ryckmani. He was further honored in 2007 when the Society for Vector Ecology gave him the Distinguished Achievement Award.
In 2008, he received the University Distinguished Service Award, the highest honor awarded by Loma Linda University.
Ryckman built a considerable publishing legacy during his lifetime. He authored or co-authored approximately 115 publications, and his papers are a rich library of information about every aspect of triatomine and mammalian hosts of T. cruzi.
As a service to the scientific research community, Ryckman regularly contributed bibliographies, which, in the age before the Internet and electronic publishing, were a valuable source of information for researchers. He stated that “A bibliographic monograph is the summation of our historical, cultural, and scientific heritage in a given field of endeavor.”
The capstone of his career was the publication of three bibliographies of the world literature concerning Triatominae, Triatominae-borne pathogens and Chagas disease. Compiled over the course of 16 years, and with a total number of references exceeding 23,000 publications, these bibliographies are a unique and unparalleled contribution to the field of Chagas disease research. Additionally, after his retirement, he co-authored a book on the life of Edmund Jaeger, a biologist well known for his studies of the desert ecology of the U.S. Southwest.
Ryckman also leaves behind a vast and valuable collection of more than 25,000 insects, which he donated to the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis. The collection includes triatomine samples from the numerous colonies he kept, as well as tsetse flies and other parasitic insects.
Raymond Edward Ryckman was born June 19, 1917, and grew up on a farm in rural Wisconsin. He exhibited an early fascination with insects that would inform his later career. At the age of 24, he was drafted into the Army and served for four years at the hospital at the Presidio Army Base in San Francisco. During this time, he met and married his wife, Evelyn Larson.
A dedicated family man, Ryckman frequently took his wife and three children on trips for fieldwork across the United States and to Mexico. He published several articles with his sons as co-authors, and he credited his wife for carefully and patiently reviewing and editing his manuscripts prior to submission.
A memorial service and reception for Raymond Ryckman will be held Monday, July 25, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Emmerson-Bartlett Memorial Chapel in Redlands. A graveside service will follow the next day, July 26, 11 a.m., at Montecito Memorial Park in Loma Linda.