Ritter's early funding came from small donations and scientific enthusiasm. The institution's transformation began when newspaper publisher E.W. Scripps and his sister Ellen Browning Scripps took an interest in the work. Ellen Scripps in particular would become a major benefactor of La Jolla more broadly — funding buildings, parks, and institutions across the community. Her generosity helped establish the permanent La Jolla campus that Ritter had been searching for. The institution was renamed in the Scripps family's honor, and the cliffs and cove below the campus — Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Park — bear her name still. The relationship between wealthy patrons and scientific ambition shaped the institution from its earliest days.

Scripps began with a simple focus: marine biology along the California coast. Over the twentieth century, that scope expanded dramatically. The institution incorporated oceanographic chemistry and physics, geology of the ocean floor, climate science, and atmospheric research. The Scripps pier — extending from the base of the bluff into the Pacific — became one of the world's longest-running continuous environmental monitoring sites. Today, the institution's research covers the physics of ocean circulation, the chemistry of seawater, the biology of deep-sea ecosystems, the geology of tectonic plates, and the patterns of global climate. Scripps researchers were among the first to document rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels — a measurement that began at Mauna Loa Observatory in 1958 under Scripps scientist Charles David Keeling. The 'Keeling Curve' remains one of the most recognizable records in climate science.

The Scripps campus sits at the edge of the Torrey Pines mesa in La Jolla, between the Pacific and the University of California San Diego campus to the east. The institution's buildings range from early-twentieth-century Spanish Colonial structures to modern research facilities. The Birch Aquarium at Scripps, open to the public, offers exhibits on oceanography and marine life drawn directly from the institution's research. Below the campus, at the foot of the cliffs, the Scripps Beach tidepools are among the most visited on the San Diego coast. The pier extends 1,000 feet into the Pacific, collecting continuous water temperature and wave data. The campus awards the Nierenberg Prize annually to recognize researchers making exceptional contributions to science in the public interest.

There is something about the geography that explains Scripps. The La Jolla submarine canyon — one of the deepest nearshore underwater canyons on the Pacific coast — begins almost at the shoreline just south of the campus. It funnels cold, nutrient-rich water toward the surface, creating exceptional conditions for marine life. The canyon also focuses wave energy, producing the powerful surf at Black's Beach to the north and La Jolla Cove's clear, protected waters to the south. Ritter chose well. The ocean here behaves in ways that reward observation, and Scripps has been observing it for more than a century.