William Beebe
Beebe, William (1877–1962), a United States naturalist, explorer, and author. He made many trips to remote regions of the world and was particularly interested in the world under the sea. When Otis Barton invented the bathysphere, a tethered, two-man deep-sea diving chamber, Beebe adopted it for his research.
Beebe was born in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Columbia University in 1898 and became curator of ornithology (bird life) of the New York Zoological Society in 1899. He established the live bird collection in New York Zoological Park ("Bronx Zoo"). After World War I, during which he was an aviator, Beebe founded the society's department of tropical research.
His works include: Jungle Peace (1918); Galapagos, World's End (1923); The Arcturus Adventure (1926); Beneath Tropic Seas (1928); Half Mile Down (1934); Book of Bays (1942); High Jungle (1949); Unseen Life of New York (1953).