Michel Siffre

Michel Siffre is a French underground explorer, adventurer and scientist. He was born January 3, 1939 in Nice, where he spent his childhood. At just 10 years of age he explored the Imperial Cave Park, and discovered a passion for caving.

He received a postgraduate degree at the Sorbonne six months after completing his baccalauréat. His many achievements include the creation of the French Institute of Speleology in 1962.

Main Achievements

• In his youth he became interested in the space race and decided to find a way to contribute. Imagining situations faced by astronauts noticed that some of them could play in a deep cave, that motivated him to start his experiments.
• The experience of time, two months cloistered in the abyss of Scarasson without time cues on a glacier, from July 1962.^[1] He then organized several similar underground experiments for other speleologists. In 1972, Siffre went back underground for a six-month stay in a cave in Texas. He found that without time cues, several people including himself adjusted to a 48 hour rather than a 24-hour cycle^[2]
• The notes of his experiments were used by NASA. Several astronauts reported experiences similar to those experienced in underground experiments such as loss of short-term memory to be isolated from external time references.

Publications

• Hors du temps. L'expérience du 16 juillet 1962 au fond du gouffre de Scarasson par celui qui l'a vécue, Julliard, 1963
• Des merveilles sous la terre, Hachette, cop. 1976
• Stalactites, stalagmites, cop. 1984
• L'or des gouffres: découvertes dans les jungles mayas, Flammarion, 1979
• Dans les abîmes de la terre, Flammarion, 1975
• La France des grottes et cavernes, Privat, 1999
• A la recherche de l'art des cavernes du pays Maya, A. Lefeuvre, 1979
• Découvertes dans les grottes mayas, Arthaud, 1993

Notes and references

See also

Bibliography

• Schut, Une histoire culturelle de la spéléologie, L’Harmattan.