Piccard, Jacques

Piccard, Jacques

▪ Swiss oceanic engineer
in full  Jacques-Ernest-Jean Piccard 
born July 28, 1922, Brussels, Belg.
died Nov. 1, 2008, La Tour-de-Peilz, Switz.

      Swiss oceanic engineer, economist, and physicist, who helped his father, Auguste Piccard (Piccard, Auguste), build the bathyscaphe for deep-sea exploration and who also invented the mesoscaphe, an undersea vessel for exploring middle depths.

      He was born in Brussels while his Swiss-born father was a professor at the University of Brussels. After graduating from the École Nouvelle de Suisse Romande in Lausanne, Switz., in 1943, he studied at the University of Geneva, taking a year off in 1944–45 in order to serve with the French First Army. Upon receiving his licentiate in 1946, he taught at the university for two years before entering private teaching.

      Meanwhile, he was helping his father to design bathyscaphes and in 1953 accompanied him in the Trieste on a dive of 10,168 feet (3,099 m) off the island of Ponza, Italy. In 1956 Jacques Piccard went to the United States seeking funding; two years later the U.S. Navy bought the Trieste and retained him as a consultant. On Jan. 23, 1960, he and Lieutenant Don Walsh of the U.S. Navy set a new submarine depth record by descending 10,916 metres (35,810 feet) into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean using the Trieste. He recounted this feat in Seven Miles Down (1961), written with Robert Dietz. In the early 1960s, working with his father, he designed and built the first of four mesoscaphes. His first mesoscaphe, the Auguste Piccard, capable of carrying 40 passengers, transported some 33,000 tourists through the depths of Lake Geneva during the 1964 Swiss National Exhibition in Lausanne. In 1969 he drifted some 3,000 km (1,800 miles) along the east coast of North America in the mesoscaphe Ben Franklin, conducting research on the Gulf Stream for the U.S. Navy.

      In his later career Piccard was a consultant scientist for several private American organizations for deep-sea research, including the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, New York (1966–71). In the 1970s he founded the Foundation for the Study and Protection of Seas and Lakes, based in Cully, Switz. In 1999 his son Bertrand Piccard, together with Englishman Brian Jones, completed the first nonstop circumnavigation of the globe in a balloon.

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Universalium. 2010.

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  • Piccard, Jacques-Ernest-Jean — ▪ 2009       Swiss oceanic engineer, economist, and physicist born July 28, 1922, Brussels, Belg. died Nov. 1, 2008, La Tour de Peilz, Switz. helped his father, Auguste Piccard, build the bathyscaphe for deep sea exploration and invented the… …   Universalium

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  • Jacques Piccard — Don Walsh und Jacques Piccard …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Jacques Piccard — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Piccard. Jacques Piccard (de face) et Don Walsh (en bas) à bord du bathyscaphe Trieste en 1960. Jacques Piccard, né le 28 …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Piccard, Auguste — born Jan. 28, 1884, Basel, Switz. died March 24, 1962, Lausanne Swiss born Belgian physicist and balloon and undersea explorer. He studied and taught physics in Zürich and later at the University of Brussels (1922–54). In 1930 he designed a… …   Universalium

  • Jacques Piccard — (de pie) y Don Walsh (agachado) Nacimiento 28 de julio de 1922 Bruselas …   Wikipedia Español

  • Piccard — ist der Familienname der schweizerischen Piccard (Familie) sowie folgender Personen: Auguste Piccard (1884–1962), schweizerischer Physiker und Erfinder, bekannt für Stratosphärenflüge und Tiefseetauchversuche, Sohn von Jules Piccard,… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • PICCARD (A.) — PICCARD AUGUSTE (1884 1962) Physicien suisse, qui enseigna d’abord à l’École polytechnique fédérale, puis à l’université de Bruxelles. Piccard est cependant beaucoup plus connu pour ses explorations, qui ont frappé le public sans représenter pour …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Piccard —   [pi kaːr],    1) Auguste, schweizerischer Physiker, * Basel 28. 1. 1884, ✝ Lausanne 25. 3. 1962, Vater von 2); wurde 1917 Professor in Zürich, 1922 in Brüssel. Er unternahm 1931 mit seinem Assistenten F. Kipfer von Augsburg aus den ersten… …   Universal-Lexikon

  • Jacques — Jacques, die französische Form des männlichen Vornamens Jakob. Bekannte Namensträger sind: Inhaltsverzeichnis A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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