Earle, Sylvia Alice (1935-…), is an American oceanographer and environmentalist. In 1979, she was the first person to dive solo to 1,250 feet (381 meters) beneath the surface without being connected to a support vessel. During that dive, she reached the floor of the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
In 1981, Earle and her then-husband, engineer Graham Hawkes, founded a company called Deep Ocean Engineering. The company designs and builds underwater research vehicles known as submersibles. From 1990 to 1992, Earle served as chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a branch of the Department of Commerce. For NOAA, Earle helped determine environmental damage caused by Iraq’s destruction of Kuwaiti oil wells during the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
Earle was born on Aug. 30, 1935, in Gibbstown, New Jersey. After graduating from Florida State University, she earned a Ph.D. degree in botany from Duke University. She is the author of more than 90 research papers and books, including Sea Change: A Message from the Oceans (1995).
See also Exploration.
