Swiss oceanic engineer, physicist, and economist

Jacques Piccard is a Swiss oceanic engineer best noted for making the deepest ocean dive (with Lt. Don Walsh) in the bathyscaph Trieste, a submersible vessel he helped build with his father, Auguste Piccard.

Jacques Ernest-Jean Piccard was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1922, where his Swiss-born father taught at the city's university. He attended the École Nouvelle de Suisse Romande in Lausanne, Switzerland, and in 1943, enrolled at the University of Geneva where he studied economics, history and physics. Piccard put his education on hold for a year in 1944 to serve with the French First Army. Upon leaving the service, he resumed studies and went on to receive his licentiate in 1946.

In the 1950s, Piccard joined his father in designing new and improved deep ships or "bathyscaphes." Their 50-ft (15-m) long navigable diving vessel, the Trieste, consisted...