Cousteau, Jacques Yves (1910-1997), French naval officer, marine
explorer, author, and documentary filmmaker, born in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, a small town
near Bordeaux. His father was a lawyer who traveled constantly. As a result, the boy was
often on the move. He was a sickly child. Nonetheless, he learned to swim and spent hours
at the beach. Formal schooling bored Cousteau; he was expelled from high school for
breaking 17 of the school's windows.
His first dive was in Lake Harvey, Vt., in the summer of 1920. He was spending the season
away from New York City, where he and his parents lived briefly. In 1930, Cousteau passed
the highly competitive entrance examinations to enter France's Naval Academy. Cousteau was
serving in the French navy as a gunnery officer when he began his underwater explorations.
In 1943 he and French engineer Émile Gagnan perfected the aqualung, a cylinder of
compressed air connected through a pressure-regulating valve to a face mask, enabling a
diver to stay underwater for several hours. Cousteau has made full-length films, film
shorts, and numerous television films; The Silent World (1956) and World Without Sun
(1966) each won an Academy Award as the best documentary feature of the year. Cousteau has
written many books, including a series entitled Undersea Discoveries of Jacques-Yves
Cousteau. In the 1970s, he formed the Cousteau Society, an environmental group based in
Norfolk, Va.
"Cousteau, Jacques Yves," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994
Microsoft Corporation. Copyright
(c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation.
Other Links of interest
Cousteau Society
