The Remarkable Life of William Beebe: Explorer and Naturalist.

Carol Grant Gould 

If Indiana Jones had been a naturalist rather than an archaeologist, be might have been named William Beebe. A socialite and celebritY, Beebe was also one of the foremost scientists of the early 20th century. Before him, naturalists were catalogers of species, usually examined when dead. Beebe changed all that by studying not just live animals but also their behaviors and habitats. He pioneered the technique of examining everything--plants, animals, soil, trees, and rocks--within a delimited area to understand how ecosystems worked. Best known for being the first person to dive to 2,000 feet under the ocean in an iron bathysphere lowered from a ship, he also wrote two dozen best-selling books on his wildlife studies in Trinidad, the Galapagos Islands, British Guiana, the Himalayas, and many other places. Gould, a science writer, was the first biographer given access to the journals and correspondence that Beebe kept from 1887 until his death in 1962. The product is a comprehensive and fascinating picture of this pioneer. Shearwater Books, 2004, 358 p., b&w photos, illus., hardcover, $30.00.