Jacques-Yves Cousteau
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Jacques-Yves Cousteau (11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, photographer and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the aqua-lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française.
Cousteau was born in Saint André de Cubzac, France to Daniel and Elizabeth Cousteau on June 11, 1910 and died in Paris, France. He is generally known in France as le commandant Cousteau ("Commander Cousteau"). Worldwide, he was commonly known as Jacques Cousteau or Captain Cousteau.
Personal history
Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France to Daniel Cousteau (a lawyer) and Elizabeth Cousteau.- 1933: He joined the French Navy.
- 12 June 1937: He married Simone Melchior.
- 1938: His son Jean-Michel Cousteau was born.
- 1940: His son Phillipe Cousteau was born.
- 1967: His grandson Fabien Cousteau (son of Jean-Michel Cousteau) was born.
- 1979: His son Phillipe Cousteau died in a PBY Catalina flying boat crash.
- 1 December 1990: His wife Simone died of cancer.
- June 1991: He married Francine Triplet. They already had a daughter Diane Cousteau and a son Pierre-Yves Cousteau from before their marriage. The rest of his family was unaware of this second family until 1991.
Early life
In 1930, Cousteau was admitted to the École Navale (Naval Academy) in Brest and became a gunnery officer of the French Navy, which gave him the opportunity to make his first underwater experiments. He was training to become a pilot, but a serious car accident ended his aviation career. In 1936 he tested a model of underwater goggles, perhaps the ancestors of modern diving masks.In 1937 he married Simone Melchior. He took part in World War II, and during the conflict he found the time to be co-inventor, with Emile Gagnan, of the first commercially successful open circuit type of SCUBA diving equipment, the aqua-lung in 1943"Year by Year 1943" -- History Channel International. Among the things that prompted him to develop efficient air-breathing free-swimming diving gear, were two oxygen toxicity accidents that he had earlier with rebreathers.
After WWII, while still a naval officer, he developed techniques (including forming an unofficial clearance diver unit using his aqua-lungs) for minesweeping of France's harbors. He also explored shipwrecks.
At one point he explored a deep flooded cave at Vaucluse in France; during this he experienced difficulties because he had relied on a previous report by a standard diver who had dived there, but that previous report proved to be very inaccurate or complete fiction.#redirect [[Template:Fact]]
During this he made an underwater film called Épaves (Shipwrecks). While planning to make it, he found that under postwar shortages, unexposed movie film was impossible to buy, so his wife had to make movie reels by gluing together end-to-end dozens of small short unexposed film reels intended for children's toy cameras. Showing this film proved vital in persuading the French Navy to make official his unofficial diving capsule.
Exploration on the Calypso
In 1950 shortly after his 40th birthday Loel Guinness (who was named the president of the French Oceanographic Campaigns) bought the ex-Royal Navy minesweeper Calypso when it was doing service as a ferry between Malta and Gozo. Guinness leased it to Cousteau for a symbolic one franc a year.In the Calypso Cousteau visited the most interesting waters of the planet, including some rivers. During these trips he produced many books and films. Cousteau won three Oscars for The Silent World (1956), The Golden Fish, and World Without Sun (1964), as well as many other top awards including the Palme d'Or in 1956 at the Cannes Film Festival. His work did a great deal to popularize knowledge of underwater biology and was featured in the long-lived documentary television series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau which began in 1968.
In the mid-1950s, Cousteau had worked with Luis Marden aboard the Calypso, in which they pioneered new techniques in underwater photography. In 1963, along with Jean de Wouters, Cousteau developed the underwater camera named "Calypso-Phot" which was later licensed to Nikon and became the "Calypso-Nikkor" and then the Nikonos. Together with Jean Mollard, he created the SP-350, a two-man submarine that could reach a depth of 350 m below the ocean's surface. The successful experiment was soon repeated in 1965 with two submarines that reached 500 m depth.
In 1957, Cousteau was made director of the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco, created the Underseas Research Group in Toulon, was the leader of the Conshelf Saturation Dive Program (long-term immersion experiments, the first manned undersea colonies) and was one of the few foreigners who has been admitted to the American Academy of Sciences.
Marine conservation
Cousteau's popularity was increasing. In October 1960, a large amount of radioactive waste was going to be discarded in the sea by EURATOM. Cousteau organized a publicity campaign which gained wide popular support. The train carrying the waste was stopped by women and children sitting on the railway, and it was sent back to its origin. The risk was avoided. During this, a French government man had said falsely to a newspaper that Cousteau had approved the dump; Cousteau managed to get the newspaper to issue a correction.#redirect [[Template:Fact]]In November 1960 in Monaco an official visit by the French president Charles de Gaulle turned into a debate on the events of October 1960 and on nuclear experiments in general. The French ambassador already had suggested that Prince Rainier avoid the subject, but the president allegedly asked Cousteau in a friendly manner to be kind toward nuclear researchers, and Cousteau allegedly replied: "No sir, it is your researchers that ought to be kind toward us." During this discussion, Cousteau realized that the reason for French experiments and research was American refusal to share its atomic secrets with its allies.#redirect [[Template:Fact]]
In 1973, along with his two sons, and Frederick Hyman who was the first President, he created the Cousteau Society for the protection of ocean life; it now has more than 300,000 members.
In 1977, together with Peter Scott, he received the UN international environment prize.
In 1985 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.
In 1992 he was invited to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations' international conference on environment and development, and then he became a regular consultant for the UN and the World Bank.
Legacy
Cousteau liked to call himself an "oceanographic technician". He was in reality a sophisticated lover of nature. His work permitted many people to explore the resources of the "blue continent".His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticised at the time by some academics. The so-called divulgationisme, a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern TV broadcasting.
In 1975, folk singer John Denver composed the song "Calypso" as a tribute to Cousteau and his research ship Calypso. The song reached the number one position on the Billboard 100 charts.
In his last years, after marrying again, Cousteau became involved in a legal battle with his son Jean-Michel over the use of the Cousteau name. On January 11, 1996, the Calypso sank in Singapore harbour. Cousteau died on June 25, 1997. Despite these difficulties, Jean-Michel and his son, Fabien Cousteau, have carried on the work of ocean exploration and filmmaking that Jacques Cousteau began. Fabien Cousteau has studied sharks in their natural habitat with a custom-built shark-shaped submarine. Jean-Michel Cousteau made a new documentary series Ocean Adventures[Ocean Adventures] released in 2006. One episode of the series, Voyage to Kure, inspired the President of the United States of America George W. Bush to create the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument, the largest marine protected area in the world [Turnaround as Bush creates huge aquatic Eden] by Kenneth Weiss of the Los Angeles Times, June 15 2006 [Ocean Adventures web site] .
Pop Culture References
The 2004 Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is regarded as both an homage and send-up of Cousteau's career. There are also several humourous references made in episodes of the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants, usually in the beginning of the episode. Costeau is also referenced in the Flash movie The Demented Cartoon Movie by Brian Kendall.
References
See also
External links
- [The Cousteau Society]
- [About the Cousteau Society] (A page by Robert Simms of Clemson University Mathematics Department)
- [NOAA summary of Cousteau Society contributions]
- [Cousteau speaking to young people] (.mov QuickTime movie, 1.6Mb)
- [Short biography]
- [Obituary (CNN)]
- [Find-A-Grave profile for Jacques-Yves Cousteau]
- [Jacques-Yves Cousteau] (A brief biography by British amateur scuba diver Dave "Hooch" Hasney)
- [Fact file by NNDB]
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