Jacques Piccard
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Jacques Piccard (born July 28, 1922) is a Belgian explorer and engineer, known for having developed underwater vehicles for studying ocean currents. He is the only person (as of 2006), along with Lt. Don Walsh, to have reached the deepest point on the earth's surface, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench.
Jacques Piccard was born in Brussels, Belgium to Auguste Piccard, who was himself an adventurer and engineer.
On January 23, 1960, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, reached the ocean floor in the Challenger Deep with his bathyscaphe Trieste. The depth of the descent was measured at 10,916 meters (35,813 feet), later more accurate measurements in 1995 have found the Challenger Deep to be less deep at 10,911 m (35,797 ft). The descent took almost five hours and the two men spent barely twenty minutes on the ocean floor before undertaking the 3 hour 15 minute ascent.
Jacques Piccard constructed four submarines:
- The Auguste Piccard, the world's first passenger submarine.
- The Ben Franklin
- The F.-A. Forel
- The PX-44
Jacques Piccard is the founder of the Foundation for the Study and Protection of Seas and Lakes, based in Cully, Switzerland.
[edit] The Piccard family
The Piccard family is noted for undertaking challenges. Jacques' father Auguste Piccard twice beat the record for reaching the highest altitude in a balloon, in 1931-32. Jacques' son Bertrand Piccard commanded the first flight around the world nonstop with a balloon, in March 1999. In fiction, Star Trek's Jean-Luc Picard is arguably descended from the Piccard family, but the name spellings are different.
- Auguste Piccard (physicist, aeronaut, balloonist, hydronaut)
- Jacques Piccard (hydronaut)
- Bertrand Piccard (aeronaut, balloonist)
- Jacques Piccard (hydronaut)
- Jean-Felix Piccard (organic chemist, aeronaut, and balloonist)
- Jeannette Piccard (wife of) (aeronaut and balloonist)
- Don Piccard (balloonist)
