Jacques-Piccard-Obituary

Jacques Piccard

Obituary

GENEVA (AP) - Jacques Piccard, a scientist and underwater explorer who plunged deeper beneath the ocean than any other man, died Saturday, his son's company said. He was 86.

Piccard died at his Lake Geneva home in Switzerland, the company Solar Impulse said.

Exploration ran in the Piccard family. Jacques' physicist father, Auguste, was the first man to take a balloon into the stratosphere and his son, Bertrand, was the first man to fly a balloon nonstop around the world.

Jacques Piccard helped his father invent the bathyscaphe, a vessel that allows humans to descend to great depths.

On Jan. 23, 1960, he and U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh took the vessel into the Pacific's Mariana Trench and dove to a depth of 35,800 feet — nearly seven miles (11 kilometers) below sea level. It remains the deepest dive ever carried out.

"By far the most interesting find was the fish that came floating by our porthole," Piccard said of the dive. "We were astounded to find higher marine life forms down there at all."

Solar Impulse said the discovery of living organisms at such a depth played a key role in the prohibition of nuclear waste dumping in ocean trenches.

After the dive, Piccard continued to research the deep seas and worked for NASA.

He also built four mid-depth submarines — or mesoscaphes — including the first tourist submarine. During the Swiss National Exhibition in 1964, he took 33,000 passengers into the depths of Lake Geneva. He continued taking high school children into the lake well into his 70s.

Born in Brussels in 1922, Piccard was nine years old when his father took his balloon into the stratosphere.

He studied in Switzerland and worked as a university teacher of economics, but abandoned his teaching to help his father design the bathyscaphe.

Auguste Piccard's great bathyscaphe, the Trieste, made several descents in the Atlantic Ocean, but its greatest moment came after it was acquired and redesigned by the U.S. Navy.

In April 1999, when Bertrand Piccard completed a round-the-world balloon trip with Briton Brian Jones, his team drew on Jacques' experiences of traveling in the waters of the Gulf Stream to work out how best to use the jet stream to speed the balloon around the world.

They also made use of some of the ideas used by grandfather Auguste in his pioneering flights, including the notion of only partially inflating the balloon at takeoff to allow for the expansion of the gases at higher altitudes, and the use of an airtight capsule.

Bertrand continues to work on pioneering projects. His Solar Impulse project aims to fly a solar-powered airplane around the world.

Jacques "passed on to me a sense of curiosity, a desire to mistrust dogmas and common assumptions, a belief in free will, and confidence in the face of the unknown," Bertrand Piccard said in a statement Saturday.

Funeral details and precise details of survivors were not immediately available.


Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press


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I first met Jacques Picard when he was attending the Indian Science Congress in Tirupathi India in 1980. He was so tall, he found it very uncomfortable during the three hour car journey from IIT Chennai to Tirupathi. (At that time I was with the Ocean Engineering Centre at IIT Chennai). He was recounting several interesting anecdotes during this journey and for me this was one of the most interesting trips to Tirupathi. I am truly shocked to hear that he passed away in 2008. He and his family...

may you inspire the rest of us who are living as you plunged into the unknown

With your spirit of freedom,love for adventure and being generously open-minded for all people,you have given me an life-time rememberance.Thanks. I wish you a good and exiting journey to those places in the universe you can go to now.

Family Piccard, I wish you all the strength you need. He has made his stamp on this Earth and will never be forgotten.

A completly unkown young man that loved to have an autografh in one of his books, back in 1989. Generously being invited...

A great man whom I had the pleasure of meeting: affable, cordial and truly a family man. You inspired me, and humanity, deeply. Rest in peace for the family you fathered continues to thrive and aspire.

ALL I CAN SAY IS THANK YOU FOR YOUR INSITE -THE OCEAN IS ANOTHER WORLD ON ITS OWN AND WE WOULD NEVER KNOW THAT WITHOUT PEOPLE LIKE YOU.

May God hold Mr. Piccard in His memory and bless the family he left behind. Psalms 83:18

May your hearts soon be filled with wonderful memories of joyful times together as you celebrate a life well-lived.

ROBERT A. REED & DARLENE phillipsburg nj USA

REST IN PEACE JACQUES PICCARD