Background
He was born on 29 July in 1877 in Brooklyn, New York, United States.
BEEBE
naturalist, ornithologist, and explorer
He was born on 29 July in 1877 in Brooklyn, New York, United States.
William graduated from Columbia University in 1898, and in 1899 became curator of birds at the New York Zoological Society (Bronx Park Zoo).
William originated the collection of living birds at the zoo and developed it into one of the finest in the world. In 1916 he founded a research station in British Guiana and was made the director of the Tropical Research Department of the Society. He established several other stations, in Venezuela, Bermuda, Trinidad, and elsewhere. Beebe's explorations took him to Nova Scotia, Florida, Mexico, the GalápagosGalapagos Islands, Borneo, China, Japan, and the Himalayas. His trips to Asia from 1910 to 1911 were made to gather data for a monograph on pheasants, for which he was awarded the Elliott Medal of the National Academy of Sciences. Beebe was also noted for his descents into the sea, starting in 1930, in his specially constructed "bathysphere," a forerunner of the modern bathyscaphe, from which he made detailed observations of deep-water life. Among his 300 scientific and popular articles and books are Beneath Tropic Seas (1928), Half Mile Down (1934), High Jungle (1949), and Adventures with Beebe (1955). In 1952 Beebe became director emeritus of the Zoological Society and until his death spent most of his time at the Trinidad research station.