PICCARD, AUGUSTE

born Jan. 28, 1884, Basel, Switz. died March 24, 1962, Lausanne Swiss-born Belgian physicist notable for his exploration of both the upper stratosphere and the depths of the sea in ships of his own design. In 1930 he built a balloon to study cosmic rays. In 1932 he developed a new cabin design for balloons and in the same year ascended to 16,916 m (55,000 feet). He completed a bathyscaphe in 1948 and later made several dives with his son Jacques. Piccard was born into a family of Swiss scholars. His father, Jules Piccard, was a professor of chemistry at the University of Basel. Auguste and his twin brother, Jean, enrolled together at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zrich, where they studied physics and chemistry, respectively. When they became doctors of science, both decided to teach in universities; Jean, the chemist, went first to Munich, then to Lausanne, then to the United States; and Auguste, the physicist, stayed on at the Institute. In 1919 Auguste married the daughter of a French historian at the Sorbonne. Ascent of a Piccard balloon Piccard became interested in balloon ascents as a means of making experiments. He participated in many important research studies, and when the University of Brussels in 1922 created a chair for applied physics, Piccard, who was also a mechanic and an engineer, readily accepted the post. Having studied cosmic rays, he conceived of an experiment for observing them at 16,000 or more metres in the upper atmosphere. Previous ascents had shown that the stratosphere could be fatal and that to penetrate the isothermal layer, with its low pressure, a revolutionary balloon would be necessary. He built such a balloon in 1930, with Belgian financing. Its main innovative feature was an airtight cabin, equipped with pressurized air; today this technique has become commonplace on airplanes. Another innovation was the design of a very large balloon having sufficient ascent strength so that, on departure, it need not be completely filled (see photograph). On May 27, 1931, Piccard and Paul Kipfer reached an altitude of 15,781 m (51,762 feet), where the atmospheric pressure is about 1/10 that at sea level. Upon returning to the surface, the scientist-adventurers were received triumphantly in Zrich and then Brussels. In 1932, in a new cabin, this time equipped with a radio, Piccard was able to reach an altitude of 16,940 m (55,563 feet). In 1933, using the same technique but with bigger balloons, other balloonists rose to 18,500 m (60,700 feet) in the Soviet Union and 18,665 m (61,221 feet) in the United States. As a child, Piccard had been fascinated by accounts of marine fish and thought that man should also descend into the depths. Now, after his aeronautical successes, he wanted to build a device capable of resisting the pressures of the ocean depths, the bathyscaphe. Depth-resistant cabins are, of necessity, heavier than water. Up to that time, around 1948, they had been suspended from a cable, but at great depths this procedure was not dependable. Piccard revolutionized the dive by the principle of the balloon. Just as a lighter-than-air balloon carried the nacelle, or balloon gondola, a lighter-than-water float would support the cabin. Just as the balloon required a release of ballast to rise, the bathyscaphe would release weight in order to ascend after having completed its dive. Air, because it is too easily compressed, was not used in the floats; Piccard chose gasoline. World War II interrupted the construction of the bathyscaphe, which was not completed until 1948. In October 1948 an unpiloted trial dive with the bathyscaphe F.N.R.S. 2 was conducted successfully. The cabin withstood the 1,400-metre (4,600-foot) pressure perfectly, but the float was severely damaged by a heavy swell of water that it encountered after the dive. The bathyscaphe project was subsequently troubled by various difficulties until Jacques Piccard, Auguste's son, intervened. Jacques, an assistant in economics at the University of Geneva, had already conducted the negotiations with the French government. Then, while in Trieste for the purpose of preparing a study of that port, he received an unexpected offer from that city's local industry to build a new bathyscaphe. Thus, in August 1953, two bathyscaphes competed in the Mediterranean, at Toulon, Fr., and at Naples: the French craft F.N.R.S. 3 descended to 2,100 m (6,900 feet), and the Piccards' Trieste went down to 3,150 m (10,330 feet). At the age of 69, Auguste Piccard had realized his dream. His son, abandoning economics, followed in his father's footsteps and collaborated in future work with bathyscaphes. In 1954 Piccard retired from teaching and left Brussels for Switzerland. Pierre de Latil The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica Additional reading In French, see Pierre de Latil and Jean Rivoire, Le Professeur Auguste Piccard (1962). The same authors' A la recherche du monde marin (1954; Man and the Underwater World, 1956), deals with the explorations undertaken by Auguste and Jacques. English translations of Auguste Piccard's writings are: Earth, Sky and Sea and In Balloon and Bathyscaph (both 1956).