Marvalee Hendricks was born in
Orange, California on July 31, 1939. She attended the
University of Southern California (USC), earning a B.A. in 1961; M.S. in 1964; and completing her Ph.D. in 1968 under herpetologist
Jay Savage. While at USC she met and married biologist
David B. Wake and gave birth to a son. Wake became assistant professor at the
University of Illinois at Chicago, and later she and her husband moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where David assumed directorship of the
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and Marvalee became a professor. She was rapidly promoted, eventually assuming the chair of the Department of Zoology and its successor, the Department of Integrative Biology. She is also recognized for her contributions towards the field of vertebrate
morphology. Biologist
Brian K. Hall writes: "Consistently, passionately and effectively, Marvalee Wake has advocated the teaching of morphology as a multifaceted modern science that informs evolutionary biology and evolutionary theory, and is foundational to integrative biology." Wake has published or co-published over 200 journal articles and book chapters, edited a revision of the textbook ''Hyman's Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy
(originally written by Libbie H. Hyman), and co-edited a general biology textbook (Biology
, 1979) as well as the scholarly book The Origin and Evolution of Larval Forms
(1999). and she and her husband are jointly commemorated in the names of the frog genus Wakea and the lizard Cyrtodactylus wakeorum'' (Wakes' gecko). A
festschrift of papers in her honor was published in the journal
Zoology in 2005. Wake has served as advisor to 17 doctoral students and 15 post-doctoral students. In 2014 she received the Henry S. Fitch Award for Excellence in Herpetology from the
American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. ==Books==