1958-

Swiss Psychiatrist and Balloonist

On March 21, 1999, Swiss psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard and British balloon instructor Brian Jones (1947- ) became the first men to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon. Their voyage aboard Breitling Orbiter 3, a high-tech hot-air balloon, took 20 days.

Born in 1958, Piccard comes from a distinguished family of adventurers. His grandfather was Auguste Piccard (1884-1962), a Swiss physician whose inventions included the pressurized cabin. Aboard a pressurized balloon in 1931, Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer become the first men to enter the stratosphere. Jacques Piccard (1922- ), son of Auguste and father of Bertrand, invented the bathyscaphe, a type of submarine made for extreme depths. Aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960, he and Donald Walsh descended to a record depth of 35,800 feet (10,916 meters) in the Marianas Trench of the Pacific Ocean.

Bertrand Piccard has pursued a dual career as a psychiatrist and adventurer in various forms of flight...