Jacques-Yves Cousteau, front, second from the left, mugged for his family photo in his hom village of Saint-André-de-Cubzac.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1917
Saint-andré-de-cubzac, Aquitaine, France
Jacques-Yves Cousteau in childhood around 1917.
College/University
Career
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1950
United States
Oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau demonstrates his latest invention, the Aqua-Lung, with the help of Ethel Janney of Cold Spring Harbor, and Commander Douglas Fane, Chief of the United States Navy underwater demolition squad.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1953
Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau for the filming of Le Monde Du Silence, using his nautilus to let him move easily. Early 1950s.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1954
French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau with his wife Simone Melchior Cousteau, 31st October 1954.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1956
Cannes, France
French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau hosts a party on board his research vessel 'Calypso' before the showing of George Clouzot's film 'Le Monde Du Silence' at the Cannes Film Festival. Present are (left to right) Edith Zetline, Cousteau, crew member Albert Falco and actresses Isabelle Corey and Bella Darvi.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1957
Marseille, France
Port of Marseille: commander Jacques Yves Cousteau putting on his combination of dive helped by Hubert Falco (to the right) for the program "Live from" on the scuba diving. Photo by Daniel Fallot.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1959
New York City, New York, United States,
Jacques Cousteau, the French undersea explorer, stands by his bathyscaphe 'Calypso' on a dockside in New York, United States, 1st September 1959.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1964
Nice, France
Pointing to a rendering of his "Spheric Submarine Base" design, Jacques Cousteau explains how five men will spend the night underwater in this new housing.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1970
Constanța, Romania
French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, scientist and researcher Jacques Cousteau on research ship 'Calypso' at the Port of Constanța, on the western Black Sea coast of Romania, circa 1970.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1970
Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau and colleagues prepare for a dive wearing wet suits and scuba gear.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1971
Jacques-Yves Cousteau portrait photo.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1971
Jacques-Yves Cousteau in 1971.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1973
Jacques and Phillipe Cousteau. From the television show The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1973
Jacques Cousteau, background, and his son, Phillipe, at the wheel of a ship.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1974
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, a world-renowned marine biologist and explorer, sits in the sunshine. Cousteau and his research crew plan four expeditions aboard the research vessel Calypso to be televised by the ABC television network and shown on "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" during the 1974-1975 television season.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1975
Portrait of explorer Jacques Cousteau on the deck of a boat, photographed in connection with the television show 'The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau', May 1975. Photo by Will Raynor.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1979
Cambridge, MA, United States
French marine explorer, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (left) and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (right) discuss the day's program at Harvard University's 328th Commencement.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1984
Photo of Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Circa 1984.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1984
Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Circa 1984.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1989
French explorer Paul Emile Victor and Jacques Yves Cousteau attend the conference on the future of Antarctica. Photo by Pierre Vauthey.
Gallery of Jacques Cousteau
1992
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Jacques-Yves Cousteau at the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on June 02, 1992. Photo by Antonio Ribeiro.
Achievements
Membership
National Academy of Sciences
Académie Française
Awards
Special Gold Medal
1961
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, United States
In this photo taken on April 19, 1961, in the White House Rose Garden, President John F. Kennedy is presenting Jacques Cousteau with The National Geographic Society's special gold medal. The gentleman on the right side of the photo is Dr. Melville Bell Grosvenor who was the President and editor of National Geographic.
Presidential Medal of Freedom
1985
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, United States
Undersea explorer and researcher Jacques-Yves Cousteau receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan on May 23, 1985.
Oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau demonstrates his latest invention, the Aqua-Lung, with the help of Ethel Janney of Cold Spring Harbor, and Commander Douglas Fane, Chief of the United States Navy underwater demolition squad.
French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau hosts a party on board his research vessel 'Calypso' before the showing of George Clouzot's film 'Le Monde Du Silence' at the Cannes Film Festival. Present are (left to right) Edith Zetline, Cousteau, crew member Albert Falco and actresses Isabelle Corey and Bella Darvi.
Port of Marseille: commander Jacques Yves Cousteau putting on his combination of dive helped by Hubert Falco (to the right) for the program "Live from" on the scuba diving. Photo by Daniel Fallot.
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, United States
In this photo taken on April 19, 1961, in the White House Rose Garden, President John F. Kennedy is presenting Jacques Cousteau with The National Geographic Society's special gold medal. The gentleman on the right side of the photo is Dr. Melville Bell Grosvenor who was the President and editor of National Geographic.
Pointing to a rendering of his "Spheric Submarine Base" design, Jacques Cousteau explains how five men will spend the night underwater in this new housing.
French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, scientist and researcher Jacques Cousteau on research ship 'Calypso' at the Port of Constanța, on the western Black Sea coast of Romania, circa 1970.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, a world-renowned marine biologist and explorer, sits in the sunshine. Cousteau and his research crew plan four expeditions aboard the research vessel Calypso to be televised by the ABC television network and shown on "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" during the 1974-1975 television season.
Portrait of explorer Jacques Cousteau on the deck of a boat, photographed in connection with the television show 'The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau', May 1975. Photo by Will Raynor.
French marine explorer, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (left) and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (right) discuss the day's program at Harvard University's 328th Commencement.
(Before becoming the man who introduced us to the wonders ...)
Before becoming the man who introduced us to the wonders of the sea through his beloved television series, Jacques Cousteau was better known as an engineer and the inventor of scuba. He chronicled his early days of underwater adventure in The Silent World - a memoir that was an instant, international bestseller upon its publication in 1954.
(A study of Cousteau's specially designed ship "Calypso" d...)
A study of Cousteau's specially designed ship "Calypso" details the vessel's technical modifications, and equipment and discusses Cousteau's diverse scientific expeditions and investigations.
(Virtually an encyclopedia of the undersea world, this mag...)
Virtually an encyclopedia of the undersea world, this magnificent and comprehensive volume covers all aspects of life in the oceans. It is illustrated throughout with over 385 photographs, plus maps and diagrams.
The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World
(The beloved explorer Jacques Cousteau witnessed firsthand...)
The beloved explorer Jacques Cousteau witnessed firsthand the complexity and beauty of life on earth and undersea-and watched the toll taken by human activity in the twentieth century. In this magnificent last book, now available for the first time in the United States, Cousteau describes his deeply informed philosophy about protecting our world for future generations. Weaving gripping stories of his adventures throughout, he and coauthor Susan Schiefelbein address the risks we take with human health, the overfishing and sacking of the world's oceans, the hazards of nuclear proliferation, and the environmental responsibility of scientists, politicians, and people of faith. This prescient, clear-sighted book is a remarkable testament to the life and work of one of our greatest modern adventurers.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a French filmmaker and self-taught oceanographer and by far the most famous undersea explorer of the 20th century. He was known for his extensive underseas investigations.
Background
Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born on June 11, 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Aquitaine. His mother, Marie Jeanne Elisabeth Duranthon, was the daughter of a wealthy landowner, and his father, Pierre Daniel Cousteau, was a lawyer. Jacques was the younger of their two sons. His elder brother’s name was Pierre-Antoine.
For the first seven years of his life, Cousteau suffered from chronic enteritis, a painful intestinal condition. In 1918, after the Treaty of Versailles, Cousteau's father found work as a legal adviser to Eugene Higgins, a wealthy New York expatriate. Higgins traveled extensively throughout Europe, with the Cousteau family in tow. Cousteau recorded few memories from his childhood; his earliest impressions, however, involved water and ships. His health greatly improved around this time, thanks in part to Higgins, who encouraged young Cousteau to learn how to swim. In 1920, the Cousteaus accompanied Higgins to New York City. He spent his summers at a camp on Vermont's Lake Harvey, where he first learned to dive underwater. At age 13, after a trip south of the American border, he authored a hand-bound book he called "An Adventure in Mexico." That same year, he purchased a Pathé movie camera, filmed his cousin's marriage, and began making short melodramatic films.
Education
Jacques-Yves Cousteau attended Holy Name School in Manhattan, learning the intricacies of stickball and roller-skating. When the family returned to France. During his teens, Cousteau was expelled from a French high school for "experimenting" on the school's windows with different-sized stones. As punishment, he was sent to a military-style academy Collège Stanislas in Paris, where he became a dedicated student. He graduated in 1929, unsure of which career path to follow. The military won out over filmmaking simply because it offered the opportunity for extended travel. After passing a rigorous entrance examination, he was accepted by the Ecole Navale, the French naval academy. His class embarked on a one-year world cruise, which he documented, filming everything and everyone - from Douglas Fairbanks, the famous actor, to the Sultan of Oman. He graduated second in his class in 1933.
After graduating second in his class in 1933, Jacques-Yves Cousteau was promoted to the second lieutenant and sent to a naval base in Shanghai, China. His assigned duty was to survey and map the countryside, but in his free time, he filmed the locals in China and Siberia.
In the mid-1930s, Cousteau returned to France and entered the aviation academy. Shortly before graduation, in 1936, he was involved in a near-fatal automobile accident that mangled his left forearm. His doctors recommended amputation but he steadfastly refused. Instead, he chose rehabilitation, using a regimen of his own design. He began taking daily swims around Le Mourillon Bay to rehabilitate his injured arm. He fell in love with goggle diving, marveling at the variety and beauty of undersea life. He later wrote in his book The Silent World: "One Sunday morning. I waded into the Mediterranean and looked into it through Fernez goggles. I was astonished by what I saw in the shallow shingle at Le Mourillon, rocks covered with green, brown and silver forests of algae and fishes unknown to me, swimming in crystalline water. Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course. It happened to me at Le Mourillon on that summer's day, when my eyes were opened on the sea."
In 1939, France began preparing for war, and Cousteau was promoted to gunnery officer aboard the Dupleix. The war was largely limited to ground action, however, and Germany quickly overran the ill-prepared French Army. Living in the unoccupied section of France enabled Cousteau to continue his experiments and allowed him to spend many hours with his family. In his free time, he experimented with underwater photography devices and tried to develop improved diving apparatuses. German patrols often questioned Cousteau about his use of diving and photographic equipment. Although he was able to convince authorities that the equipment was harmless, Cousteau was, in fact, using these devices on behalf of the French resistance movement. For his efforts, he was later awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm.
Cousteau regretted the limitations of goggle diving; he simply could not spend enough time underwater. The standard helmet and heavy suit apparatus had similar limitations; the diver was helplessly tethered to the ship, and the heavy suit and helmet made Cousteau feel awkward in his movements. A number of experiments with other diving equipment followed, but all the existing systems proved unsatisfactory. He designed his own "oxygen re-breathing outfit," which was less physically constrictive but which ultimately proved ineffective and dangerous. Also, during this period he began his initial experiments with underwater filmmaking. Working with two colleagues, Philippe Talliez, a naval officer, and Frédéric Dumas, a renowned spearfisherman, Cousteau filmed his first underwater movie, Sixty Feet Down, in 1942. The 18-minute film reflects the technical limitations of underwater photography but was quite advanced for its time. Cousteau entered the film in the Cannes Film Festival, where it received critical praise and was purchased by a film distributor.
As pleased as he was with his initial efforts at underwater photography, Cousteau realized that he needed to spend more time underwater to accurately portray the ocean's mysteries. In 1937, he began a collaboration with Emile Gagnan, an engineer with a talent for solving technical problems. In 1942, Cousteau again turned to Gagnan for answers. The two spent approximately three weeks developing an automatic regulator that supplied compressed air on demand. This regulator, along with two tanks of compressed air, a mouthpiece, and hoses, was the prototype Aqualung, which Gagnan and Cousteau patented in 1943.
That summer, Cousteau, Talliez, and Dumas tested the Aqualung off the French Riveria, making as many as five hundred separate dives. This device was put to use on the group's next project, an exploration of the Dalton, a sunken British steamer. This expedition provided material for Cousteau's second movie, Wreck. The film deeply impressed French naval authorities, who recruited Cousteau to assist with the dangerous task of clearing mines from French harbors. When the war ended, Cousteau received a commission to continue his research as part of the Underwater Research Group, which included both Talliez and Dumas. With increased funding and ready access to scientists and engineers, the group expanded its research and developed a number of innovations, including an underwater sled.
In 1947, Cousteau, using the Aqualung, set a world's record for free diving, reaching a depth of 300 feet (91.44 meters). The following year, Dumas broke the record with a 306-foot dive. The team developed and perfected many of the techniques of deep-sea diving, working out rigorous decompression schedules that enabled the body to adjust to pressure changes. This physically demanding, dangerous work took its toll; one member of the research team was killed during underwater testing.
On July 19, 1950, Cousteau bought Calypso, a converted United States minesweeper. The next year, after undergoing significant renovations, Calypso sailed for the Red Sea. The Calypso Red Sea Expedition (1951–52) yielded numerous discoveries, including the identification of previously unknown plant and animal species and the discovery of volcanic basins beneath the Red Sea. In February 1952, Calypso sailed toward Toulon. On the way home, the crew investigated an uncharted wreck near the southern coast of Grand Congloué and discovered a large Roman ship filled with treasures. The discovery helped spread Cousteau's fame in France. In 1953, with the publication of The Silent World, Cousteau achieved international notice. The book, drawn from Cousteau's daily logs, was written originally in English with the help of the United States journalist James Dugan and later translated into French. Released in more than 20 languages, The Silent World eventually sold more than five million copies worldwide.
In 1953, Cousteau began collaborating with Harold Edgerton, a pioneer in high-speed photography who had invented the strobe light and other photographic devices. Edgerton and his son, William, spent several summers aboard Calypso, outfitting the ship with an innovative camera that skimmed along the ocean floor, sending back blurry but intriguing photos of deep-sea creatures. The death of William Edgerton in an unrelated diving accident effectively ended the experiments, but Cousteau had already realized the limitations of such a method of exploring the ocean depths. Instead, he and his team began work on a small, easily maneuverable submarine, which he called the diving saucer, or DS–2. The sub has made more than one thousand dives and has been part of countless undersea discoveries.
In 1955, Calypso embarked on a 13,800-mile journey that was recorded by Cousteau for a film version of The Silent World. The ninety-minute film premiered at the 1956 Cannes International Film Festival, where it received the coveted Palme d'Or. The following year, the film won an Oscar from the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 1957, in part due to his film's success, Cousteau was named director of the Oceanographic Institute and Museum of Monaco. He filled the museum's aquariums with rare and unusual species garnered from his ocean expeditions.
Cousteau addressed the first World Oceanic Congress in 1959, an event that received widespread coverage and led to his appearance on the cover of Time magazine on March 28, 1960. The highly favorable story painted Cousteau as a poet of the deep. In April 1961, Cousteau received the National Geographic Society's Gold Medal at a White House ceremony hosted by President John F. Kennedy. The medal's inscription reads: "To earthbound man, he gave the key to the silent world."
During the early 1960s, Cousteau and his crew participated in the Conshelf Saturation Dive program, which was intended to prove the feasibility of extended underwater living. The success of the first mission led to Conshelf II, a month-long project involving five divers. The Conshelf program and the DS–2 project provided material for the 53-minute film World without Sun, which debuted in the United States in December 1964.
Cousteau's first hour-long television special, "The World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau," was broadcast in 1966. The program's high ratings and critical acclaim helped Cousteau land a lucrative contract with the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau premiered in 1968 and has since been rebroadcast in hundreds of countries. The program starred Cousteau and his sons, Philippe and Jean-Michel. The show ran for eight seasons, with the last episode airing in May 1976. In 1977, the Cousteau Odyssey series premiered on the Public Broadcasting System. The new show reflected Cousteau's growing concern about environmental destruction and tended not to focus on specific animal species.
In the 1970s, the Cousteau Society, a nonprofit environmental group that also focuses on peace issues, opened its doors in Bridgeport, Connecticut. By 1975, the society had more than 120,000 members and had opened branch offices in Los Angeles, New York, and Norfolk, Virginia. Eventually, Cousteau decided to make Norfolk the home base for Calypso.
In 1980, Cousteau signed a one-million-dollar contract with the National Office of Canadian Film to produce two programs on the greater St. Lawrence waterway. In 1984, the Cousteau Amazon series premiered on the Turner Broadcasting System. The four shows were enthusiastically reviewed and called attention to the threatened native South American cultures, Amazon rain forest, and creatures that lived in one of the world's great rivers. The final show of the series, "Snowstorm in the Jungle," explored the frightening world of cocaine trafficking. In the mid-1980s "Cousteau/Mississippi: The Reluctant Ally" received an Emmy award for outstanding informational special. In all, Cousteau's television programs have earned more than 40 Emmy nominations.
In addition to his television programs, Cousteau continued to produce new inventions. The Sea Spider, a many-armed diagnostic device, was developed to analyze the biochemistry of the ocean's surface. In 1980, Cousteau and his team began work on the Turbosail, which uses high-tech wind sails to cut fuel consumption in large, ocean-going vessels. In spring of 1985, he launched a new wind ship, the Alcyone, which was outfitted with two 33-foot-high Turbosails.
Cousteau continued to speak publicly about environmental issues until he was well into his eighties, although he had given up diving in cold water. In the years before his death, he had been planning for the construction of the Calypso 2 to replace the original Calypso, which had sunk in a Singapore shipyard in 1994. The $20 million vessel was to be powered by solar energy and include equipment for a television studio, marine laboratory, and satellite transmission facility. The oceanographer died of a heart attack in 1997, at his home in Paris, after suffering from a respiratory ailment.
Though he was not particularly a religious man, Cousteau believed that the teachings of the different major religions provide valuable ideals and thoughts to protect the environment. He was baptized Roman Catholic. Despite rumors by some Islamic publications, Cousteau did not convert to Islam, and when he died he was buried in a Roman Catholic Christian funeral and buried in Saint-André-de-Cubzac in France.
Politics
In 1981 Cousteau was approached by the French Greens (Les Verts) to run as their presidential candidate. After initially appearing to favor the proposal - and after two weeks of frenzied media anticipation - Cousteau changed his mind and decided against running, claiming that he could be more effective outside the political system.
Views
Jacques-Yves Cousteau was the twentieth century's best-known advocate for marine environmental protection. In 1974, he formed the Cousteau Society, a nonprofit environmental group dedicated to marine conservation. He was an environmental activist in a time when that phrase needed to be explained, campaigning, for example, against a 1960 French plan to dump nuclear waste into the Mediterranean Sea.
Quotations:
"From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free."
"The sea is the universal sewer."
"What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on."
"The glory of nature provides evidence that God exists."
"I said that the oceans were sick but they're not going to die. There is no death possible in the oceans - there will always be life - but they're getting sicker every year."
"Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and turn headlong down an immutable course."
Membership
Jacques-Yves Cousteau was one of few foreign members of America's prestigious National Academy of Sciences. In 1989, he was inducted into the famous Académie Française, France's highest form of recognition for lifetime cultural contributions.
National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
Académie Française
,
France
Personality
While some critics challenged his scientific credentials, Cousteau never claimed "expert" status in any discipline. His talents appeared as poetic as scientific; his films and books - which include the eight-volume Undersea Discovery series and the 21-volume Ocean World encyclopedia series - have a lyrical quality that conveys the captain's great love of nature. This optimism was tempered by his concerns about the environment. He emphatically demonstrated, perhaps to a greater degree than any of his contemporaries, how the quality of both the land and sea is deteriorating and how such environmental destruction is irreversible.
Physical Characteristics:
In 1936 Cousteau narrowly escaped with his life from a terrible car accident. The crash left him paralyzed on his right side and with a dozen broken bones, including multiple fractures in his arms. The damage was so severe that at one point his doctors advised amputation. However, Cousteau refused to allow this and chose a long, painful recovery instead. As part of his rehabilitation, he swam in the Mediterranean every day.
Interests
aviation
Politicians
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Fidel Castro
Writers
Jules Verne, Homer
Artists
Pablo Picasso
Sport & Clubs
swimming
Music & Bands
Maurice Ravel
Connections
During his convalescence, Jacques-Yves Cousteau met 17-year-old Simone Melchior, a wealthy high-school student who was living in Paris. After a one-year courtship, the couple married and moved into a house near Le Mourillon Bay. The Cousteau's' first son, Jean-Michel, was born in March 1938. A second son, Philippe, was born in 1939. Around this time, the new family's tranquil life on the edge of the sea was threatened by world events. On June 28, 1979, Philippe Cousteau was killed when the seaplane he was piloting crashed on the Tagus River near Lisbon, Portugal. Philippe's death deeply affected Cousteau, who was to his death unable to talk about the accident or the loss of his son. Philippe was expected to eventually take command of his father's empire; instead, Jean-Michel was given increased responsibility for overseeing the Cousteau Society and his father's other ventures.
Cousteau also had a daughter Diane Cousteau and a son, Pierre-Yves Cousteau, with his long-time mistress, Francine Triplet, whom he married in 1991 after his wife's death, and who is now chair of the Cousteau Foundation.
Several of his children and grandchildren have worked in documentary filmmaking, environmental protection, and ecotourism, leading to at least two well-publicized lawsuits over the rights to the family's famous last name and formidable estate, which includes an enormous catalog of films, television programs, photographs, and books, control of the Cousteau Society, and the fate of the fabled Calypso.