Jacques Cousteau

Jacques Cousteau (born June 11, 1910, Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France—died June 25, 1997, Paris) was a French naval officer, ocean explorer, and co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung, known for his extensive underseas investigations.

After graduating from France’s naval academy in 1933, he was commissioned a second lieutenant. However, his plans to become a navy pilot were undermined by an almost fatal automobile accident in which both his arms were broken. Cousteau, not formally trained as a scientist, was drawn to undersea exploration by his love both of the ocean and of underwater diving. In 1943 Cousteau and French engineer Émile Gagnan developed the first fully automatic compressed-air Aqua-Lung (scuba apparatus), which allowed divers to swim freely underwater for extended periods of time. Cousteau helped to invent many other tools useful to oceanographers, including the diving saucer (an easily maneuverable small submarine for seafloor exploration), in 1959, and a number of underwater cameras.

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Cousteau served in World War II as a gunnery officer in France and later was a member of the French Resistance against the German occupation of the country. He subsequently was awarded the Legion of Honour for his espionage work. Cousteau’s experiments with underwater filmmaking began during the war. He also was involved in conducting oceanographic research at a centre in Marseille with French naval officer Philippe Tailliez. When the war ended, he continued working for the French navy, heading the Undersea Research Group at Toulon.

To expand his work in marine exploration, Cousteau founded numerous marketing, manufacturing, engineering, and research organizations, which were incorporated in 1973 as the Cousteau Group. In 1950 he converted a British minesweeper into the Calypso, an oceanographic research ship, aboard which he and his crew carried out numerous expeditions. Cousteau eventually popularized oceanographic research and the sport of scuba diving in the book Le Monde du silence (1953; The Silent World), written with Frédéric Dumas. In 1956 he adapted the book into a documentary film, directed with French motion-picture director Louis Malle, that won both the Palme d’Or at that year’s Cannes international film festival and an Academy Award in 1957, one of three Oscars his films received. Also in 1957, Cousteau became director of the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco. He led the Conshelf Saturation Dive Program, conducting experiments in which men lived and worked for extended periods of time at considerable depths along the continental shelves. The undersea laboratories, called Conshelf I, II, and III, sat at depths of 10 metres (about 30 feet), 30 metres (about 100 feet), and 102.4 metres (about 336 feet), respectively, in the Mediterranean Sea near Marseilles. In 1974 he formed the Cousteau Society, a nonprofit environmental group dedicated to marine conservation.

Cousteau produced and starred in many television programs, including the American series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (1968–76). Several documentaries were produced with his son Philippe, until Philippe’s untimely death in a plane crash in 1979. He was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985. In addition to The Silent World, Cousteau also wrote Par 18 mètres de fond (1946; Through 18 Metres of Water), The Living Sea (1963), Three Adventures: Galápagos, Titicaca, the Blue Holes (1973), Dolphins (1975), and Jacques Cousteau: The Ocean World (1985). His last book, The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World (2007), was published posthumously. The documentary Becoming Cousteau (2021) focuses on his life and work.