American explorer

Charles William Beebe (1877–1962), explorer, writer, ornithologist, and deep-sea pioneer, was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in East Orange, New Jersey. He is remembered today primarily for his record-breaking 1934 descent off the coast of Bermuda with American engineer Otis Barton. Barton and Beebe dove in a diving machine of their own invention, the bathysphere, to a depth of 3,028 feet (923 m).

Beebe's parents were fascinated by natural history, and so in childhood he was a frequent visitor to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. As a teenager, Beebe taught himself taxidermy and became friends with the president of the museum, Henry Osborn. Osborn helped him gain admittance to Columbia University in 1896. In 1899, Beebe left college (without receiving a degree) to work as an assistant curator of ornithology (the study of birds) at the zoo then...