The Scripps Institution of Oceanography is the center for oceanography and Earth science based at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, California.

Ellen Browning Scripps was an American journalist and philanthropist who was the founding donor of several major institutions in Southern California. She and her half-brother E. W. Scripps created the E. W. Scripps Company, America's largest chain of newspapers and patron of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, linking Midwestern industrial cities with booming towns in the West. By the 1920s, Ellen Browning Scripps was worth an estimated $30 million, most of which she gave away.