Cousteau, Jacques Yves

Cousteau, Jacques Yves (1910-1997), French naval officer, marine explorer, author, and documentary film-maker, born in St-André-de-Cubzac and educated at the Naval School in Brest. Cousteau was serving in the French Navy as a gunnery officer when he began his underwater explorations. In 1943 he and a 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 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 wrote many books, including a series entitled Undersea Discoveries of Jacques-Yves Cousteau. (See also Deep-Sea Exploration; Ocean and Oceanography.)