Véronique Le Guen

Véronique Borel-Le Guen (16 July 1956 – 18 January 1990) was a French speleologist. She was born Véronique Borel in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, in the southeastern suburbs of Paris. Borel studied at Sciences Po before becoming the executive secretary in a publishing house. She married Francis Le Guen.

Career Le Guen became an expert cave diver, equipped with a diving suit and scuba set. She held the record for 47 hours of immersion in a sump in Australia.

Because of her physical and mental strength, Le Guen was selected by speleologist Michel Siffre to participate in an underground isolation experiment without time stimuli to study the human circadian rhythm. The study was in collaboration with CNRS, CNES and CEA.

On 10 August 1988, Le Guen descended to a depth of 82 metres into the Valat-Nègre sinkhole in the causse Noir, near Millau, in southwest France. She had radio contact with the surface, but no indication of time was communicated to her. She spent a total of 111 days in isolation, during which her sleeping-waking patterns quickly went out of phase with days above ground. Le Guen emerged on 29 November 1988. This study paved the way for a number of further isolation studies into biological rhythms and sleep cycles.

Death On 18 January 1990, fourteen months after the conclusion of the experiment Véronique Le Guen was found dead in her car parked on the rue du Pré-Saint-Gervais in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. She had taken a fatal dose of barbiturates.

Publications Seule au fond du gouffre, Arthaud, 1989. Curieux objets, étranges histoires (Flammarion, 2016) with Pierre Bellemare

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