William Beebe (1877-1962) was a naturalist, oceanographer, ornithologist, and an executive of the New York Zoological Society. With Otis Barton, he was the first to use the bathysphere, a deep-sea diving device, and set a dive record in 1934 that was not broken until 1949. Beebe wrote over 800 articles and 24 books on natural history.

Beebe was the son of Charles Beebe, a paper company executive, and Henrietta Marie Younglove. He was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 29, 1877. When Beebe was a small child, his family moved to East Orange, New Jersey, where he experienced a happy childhood and was able to expand his innate interest in the outdoors. He was deeply interested in birds, and his first publication was a letter to the editor of Harper's Young People in 1895. His parents, particularly his mother, encouraged his interest in natural history.

New York Zoological Society

Beebe took extra science classes...