He was once the director of the New York Zoo: Who is Charles William Beebe?
He painted and photographed various animals living in the sea bottoms, whose existence was not known before.
(1877-1962) US naturalist and oceanographer. He made important seabed research with the bathysphere and reached a deep-diving record that was not broken for a long time after him. He was born on July 29, 1877, in New York. He graduated from Columbia University in 1898. The following year he was appointed director of the New York Zoo, and in 1919 the director of the tropical studies division of the New York Zoological Society. Compiling one of the richest bird collections in the world during this duty, Beebe brought invaluable findings to natural history as a researcher and writer; He led several study trips to Mexico, Venezuela, British Guinea, Bermuda, the Galapagos Islands, and the West Indies. Beebe, whose interests range from mountain pheasants to mammals in tropical forests, from insects and snakes living in their natural habitats to deep-sea fish, died in Trinidad on June 4, 1962.
The bathysphere, a pressure-resistant sphere, usually made of steel, and equipped with various instruments for seabed surveys, is lowered from a vessel above the sea by being attached to a cable. It contains ventilation tools, measuring devices, and a telephone to connect to the boat. Researchers can observe the seabed through windows with thick quartz glass. The bathysphere was first used in the Mediterranean by the Italian Balzamello in 1892 and could go as deep as 165 meters. In the second attempt in 1911, US engineer H Hartman descended to 458 meters in the bathysphere. Then, in August 1934, Beebe, together with O Barton, reached a depth of 923 meters off Bermuda in a bathysphere called the Age of Progress. Later, Barton made a series of changes to the bathysphere, breaking this record in 1948, descending to 1,360 meters near California.
Beebe's attempt to go deep with the bathysphere also heralded Piccard's submersion about 25 years after this date. Without being attached to a cable such as a bathysphere, the submersible can move under the sea with the help of a light gas filled in the hull tanks and with the thrust of its propeller, providing the opportunity to research in the deepest parts of the oceans.
WORKS (mainly):
Monograph of the Pheasants, 1918,
Jungle Days, 1925,
Pheasants: Their Lives and Homes, 1926,
Beneath Tropic Seas, 1928,
Book of Naturalists, 1944,
High Jungle, 1949,
Unseen Life of New York, 1953.