French oceanographer, inventor, film-maker and author. He is the most celebrated undersea explorer in history and was the first to take color photographs of the world beneath the sea. Cousteau has won ten Emmy Awards including one for “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” which was cancelled after eight years by ABC in 1976 due to sagging ratings. In May 1985, President Reagan awarded Cousteau the Medal of Freedom during a White House ceremony. In six decades, Cousteau authored 66 books and inspired some 90 movie and TV productions.
Cousteau was raised by an upper middle class family, the son of an international lawyer. He described his mother as ‘a saint.’ As a child he wanted to be a sailor, film maker and doctor. Around the age of ten, he was diagnosed with chronic enteritis (an intestinal inflammation) as well as anemia. The only exercise he could tolerate that was permitted was swimming. This began his life long romance with the sea.
He entered the French Naval Academy in 1930, and in 1936, shot his first underwater film. During the war he served as a gunnery officer, and as his country capitulated to the Nazis, he took photographs of enemy installations for the Resistance. In 1945, he was awarded the French Legion of Honor for his Resistance involvement. In 1956 he resigned his naval commission to devote full time to his research. His 141 foot research vessel, the Calypso became his headquarters.
In 1943, he invented the Aqualung with a colleague, a device enabling humans to move about freely under water for long periods of time. In 1952, he wrote the documentary “Silent World” and the resulting movie won him his first of three Academy Awards, 1956, as well as earning the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival. He won his battle in 1960 against the French government to stop them from dumping radioactive wastes in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1962, he wrote “The Living Sea” and in 1965, “World Without Sun.” The Cousteau Society in the USA was founded in 1973 and he was awarded the United Nations Environment Prize in 1977.
In 1937, he married Simone Melchior, a member of the prominent French Naval family. Together they had two sons; Jean-Michel and Philippe. He was widowed 1990 and in 1992, he married his mistress, Francine Tripet, a former flight attendant. They had two children while he was still married to his first wife. Tripet ran the Cousteau Society’s daily affairs.
On 6/28/1979, Philippe, his youngest son by his first marriage, died in a plane crash on the Flying Calypso during a test flight over Lisbon. Philippe began diving with his father at the age of four and became his closest friend. After the tragedy, his brother Jean-Michel abandoned his architectural practice and joined forces with his father as his right hand man and vice president of the Cousteau Society.
Cousteau was not only a marine researcher but an ocean ecologist, environmentalist, humanitarian, self-taught scientist, anti-nuclear activist and visionary – but not a dreamer, a doer. Upon being called a ‘legend’ during an interview, he replied, “Bull!”
He died on 6/24/1997 in Paris from a respiratory infection and heart trouble.
Link to Wikipedia biography