The Remarkable Life of William Beebe : Explorer and Naturalist

Rating:
Summary: Scientist and celebrity
Review: Beebe led a fascinating life, mixing with scientists, actors, artists, and the likes of his mentor Theodore Roosevelt. He was so famous that cartoons featuring his familiar visage were a frequent fixture in The New Yorker. This socializing was both part of his genial and charismatic personality, and a necessity for obtaining the unprecidented amount of funding needed from wealthy patrons to support his grand research vision and its many expeditions.

Beebe was a pivotal figure in science. he was the first to study a specific group of animals (the pheasants) in the wild to reconstruct their evolution and behavioral ecology. Before that, naturalists mainly just collected things. He invented tropical ecology by setting up a field station and studying the interactions of every plant and animal in a carefully delimited areas.

Beebe was also the one who discovered how to study coral reef communities, and first to penetrate the ocean depths in his bathysphere to find that the deep sea is rich in life.

The book covers Beebe's development as a innovative and relentless scientist in an engaging narrative, never too technical but never superficial. The book contains countless indispensible photos spanning his entire career. The text also brings to life Beebe's fascinating personality: his astonishing gift with words, which made him a consistently best-selling author; his fearlessness; his love of extravagant parties; his restless energy; his insights into and devotion to conservation.

Here is a scientist and person worth knowing about, and a book that does him justice. This is the most enjoyable biography I've read in years.

Rating:
Summary: What a great man - and brilliant book
Review: This is a wonderful book - a really engrossing story about an amazing man who was both an explorer and a scientist during the last century. If they made a movie about him, he'd probably be styled as an Indiana Jones type character, as he really did look death in the eye a few times in his lifetime - particularly during the dives he made in `the bathysphere' off Bermuda in the 1930s (the bathysphere being a sort of cast iron bubble with tiny windows, which was winched off the side of a boat, and dropped down to a depth of half a mile underwater). But in my mind's eye Beebe was more like a David Niven sort of person, because as well as having a passionate interest in exploring the natural world, he was a really gifted writer, had an enormous sense of humour, and was quite dapper and a great believer in cocktails all round in the late afternoon! And when he wasn't travelling the world, he was feted in New York society circles by people like Katherine Hepburn, Noel Coward and Rudyard Kipling. The book is really enjoyable and easy to read, and quite inspiring too - transporting you back to a bygone age. And it has LOADS of pictures, which bring it to life all the more. Lovely - good antidote to grim winter weather!