Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910-1997) was a French naval officer, explorer,
ecologist, and filmmaker, who studied the sea. Although he is most famous to us
from his television programmes, he also co-developed the aqua-lung, and
pioneered marine conservation as a political and scientific priority.
In the Calypso, an
ex-Royal Navy minesweeper, Cousteau visited the most interesting waters of the
planet. During these trips he produced many books and films. He gained three
Oscars for; The Silent World, The Golden Fish, and World Without Sun, as well
as many other top awards including the Palme d'Or in 1956 at the Cannes Film
Festival.
Cousteau liked to
call himself an "oceanographic technician". He was in reality a
sophisticated lover of nature who found a way of communicating complex
scientific and biological concepts to ordinary people. While he was criticised
at the time by some academics for failing to express science 'properly', his
work permitted many people to explore the resources of the "blue
continent". As an example of his influence, in 1975, folk singer John
Denver composed the song "Calypso" as a tribute to Cousteau and his
research ship Calypso. The song reached the number one position on the
Billboard 100 charts.
Cousteau's work did
a great deal to popularize knowledge of underwater biology and was featured in
the long-lived documentary television series The Undersea World of Jacques
Cousteau which began in 1968. On
Through more than 115 television films and 50 books,
Captain Cousteau opened up the oceans to millions of households. Made a
chevalier of the Legion of Honour for his service in the Résistance, Captain
Cousteau was promoted to the rank of officer then commander in recognition of
his contributions to science. A member of the US Academy of Sciences, he was
also Director of the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco for thirty years. In 1977,
the United Nations Environment Programme awarded him the Pahlavi Prize. He
received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985. Then, in 1988, he was
inscribed in the UN Environmental Programme's Global 500 Roll of Honor of
Environmental Protection and received the National Geographic Society's
Centennial Award. Showered with awards, he was elected to the Académie
française in 1989.
In 1992 he was invited to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the
United Nations' international conference on environment and development, and
then he became a regular consultant for the UN and the World Bank.
Cousteau played a
guiding role in developing the UNESCO-Cousteau Ecotechnie Programme (UCEP),
founded in 1994 to train researchers and decision-makers through
transdisciplinary curricula combining ecological, economic, social, cultural
and technological studies. Twelve UCEP Chairs have been established at
universities and research institutions in
Also Jacques Cousteau initiated and led a major campaign in which he
collected more than five million signatures from around the world in support of
an international declaration on the rights of future generations. He worked
closely with UNESCO on the draft Declaration on the Safeguarding of Future
Generations, which was submitted for adoption at the Organisation’s General
Conference in November 1997. The French oceanographer also collaborated in the
work of UNESCO’s youth programmes as well as with the Intergovernmental
Oceanographic Commission, notably to highlight scientific solutions to ocean
problems.
Links
The biography of Cousteau in Wikipedia.
Website of the Cousteau Society.
Interview of Cousteau with UNESCO Courier in November 1991.
Statement of Cousteau at the UN Conference on Population and Development,
The UNEP Sasakawa
Environment Prize.
Stamp catalogue
Niger
last revised: