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Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born in St. André de Cubzac (Gironde, France) in 1910, and entered the French Naval Academy in 1930. From 1933 to 1935, he served in the Far East, aboard the cruiser Primauguet and ashore in Shanghai. He trained as a Navy flier until a serious automobile accident ended his aviation career. Then, near Toulon, he tried underwater goggles for the first time, and his future course was set. In 1943, he and Emile Gagnan developed the first regulated compressed-air breathing device for sustained, unencumbered diving.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau diving Jacques-Yves Cousteau has produced more than seventy films for television, films which have won numerous Emmys and other awards. Captain Cousteau has also produced three full-length theatrical feature films, The Silent World (Oscar and Palme d'Or), World Without Sun (Oscar and Grand Prix du Cinema Francais pour la Jeunesse) and Voyage to the Edge of the World. Captain Cousteau has written, in collaboration with various co-authors, more than fifty books, published in more than a dozen languages.
Recent books in English include Jacques Cousteau's Amazon Journey (1984), and Jacques Cousteau / Whales (1988); in French, Les Iles du Pacifique(1990), L'Ile des esprits (1995), and Le Monde des Dauphins (1995).
After World War II, he created and organized, in conjunction with Commander Philippe Tailliez and Frederic Dumas, an underwater research unit to carry out technical experiments and laboratory studies in diving. In 1950, Captain Cousteau acquired Calypso, a retired minesweeper of American construction. Over the next year, she was transformed into an oceanographic vessel, and the adventures of the now-famous ship began. In the four decades since, she has sailed literally around the world and has explored many of the planet's major rivers.
portrait of Jacques Cousteau
In collaboration with engineer Jean Mollard, Cousteau designed the Diving Saucer in 1959, a round, highly maneuverable, two-person submersible capable of diving to a depth of 350 meters. In 1965, twin one-man submersibles, the Sea Fleas, were launched by Cousteau. He also directed three experiments in saturation-diving techniques: Conshelf I off Marseille (1962), Conshelf II in the Red Sea (1963), and finally Conshelf III (1965), near Nice, in which six men breathing a helium-oxygen mixture lived and worked at 100 meters for three weeks. Captain Cousteau, Professor Lucien Malavard and Bertrand Charrier inaugurated the development of the Turbosail TM wind-propulsion system in 1982 and, one year later, tested the device on Moulin a Vent, a converted catamaran.
Jacques Cousteau explains Calypso II to children
In 1992, Captain Cousteau was an official guest at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The following year, he was appointed to the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Sustainable Development and agreed to serve as advisor on environmentally sustainable development to the World Bank. That same year, the President of France named him Chairman of a newly-created Council on the Rights of Future Generations; Captain Cousteau resigned this post in 1995 to protest France's resumption of nuclear testing in the Pacific. T hrough The Cousteau Society, which he founded in 1973, the Captain continues his efforts to protect and improve the quality of life for present and future generations. Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau died June 25, 1997. The Cousteau Society, which he founded in 1973, continues his effort to protect and improve the quality of life for present and future generations.