Hannes Keller, Swiss Deep-Sea Diving Pioneer, Is Dead at 88

In late June 1961, Mr. Keller and a Life journal author, Kenneth MacLeish, dove to a file depth of 728 ft in Lake Maggiore, in Switzerland, on an elaborately constructed platform that permit Mr. Keller experiment together with his combination of gases. At a depth of 350 ft, Mr. MacLeish wrote, Mr. Keller switched to a special combination of gases he had designed for deeper water.

“There’s barely sufficient ‘air’ to breathe, and it’s bitter chilly,” Mr. MacLeish wrote, “even colder than the ice water during which we now hover. My tooth itch. I attempt to say OK however can not handle it. Nonetheless, it seems that I can reside on what we’re getting.”

Mr. Keller’s success at Lake Maggiore introduced him monetary assist from the Navy. Shell Oil, which was eager about how his analysis may gain advantage its offshore oil drilling, offered the assist ship for the Catalina dive.

Regardless of the deaths on that dive, Mr. Keller and Dr. Albert Buhlmann, the cardiopulmonary specialist who had helped Mr. Keller design his fuel combination, signed a contract in 1964 with Shell Worldwide Petroleum to proceed their analysis.

“Hannes Keller’s prominence on this planet of deep diving was comparatively transient however positively daring,” Mr. Hellwarth mentioned in an e mail. “His thousand-foot dive became a Houdini-like spectacle, sadly with disastrous penalties.”

Mr. Keller moved on. Within the late Sixties, he and a enterprise accomplice, Hans Hess, developed a deep-sea diving go well with and an aerodynamic ski-racing go well with. Over the following few a long time he began a line of computer systems, developed software program applications and created a web based artwork and picture museum.

Along with his daughter Ethel, Mr. Keller is survived by one other daughter, Leonie Keller; his sons, Fabian and Severin; and two grandchildren. His marriage to Tzuara Keller-Takahashi led to divorce. His second spouse, Esther (Frei) Keller, died in 2017.