Background
He was born on January 28, 1884 in Basel, Switzerland, the son of Jules Piccard, the head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Basel, and of Helene Haltenhoff.
He was born on January 28, 1884 in Basel, Switzerland, the son of Jules Piccard, the head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Basel, and of Helene Haltenhoff.
Jean Piccard entered the University of Basel in 1902 and then transferred to the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, where received baccalaureate degree in 1907 and D. Sc. degrees. Jean Piccard's doctorate, completed in 1909, was in organic chemistry. Piccard did postdoctoral work at the University of Munich from 1910 to 1914.
In 1914 he was appointed privatdocent, but when Germany invaded Belgium, he resigned and returned to Switzerland, where he became a privatdocent at the University of Lausanne. In 1916 Piccard accepted a position as assistant professor in chemistry at the University of Chicago, receiving a leave of absence from Lausanne.
Besides teaching, he conducted research on gas mask construction, studying the ability of filters to absorb toxic gases. In 1918 he became associate professor. Although prospects at Chicago seemed bright, Piccard's leave from Lausanne expired and he felt an obligation to return to Switzerland. He remained in Lausanne from 1919 to 1926, but was not happy there. His position as professeur extraordinaire of organic chemistry did not develop into the permanent professorship that he had expected, and by 1921 he was seeking an opportunity to return to the United States.
In 1926 he secured a research appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he retained until 1929. Meanwhile, in 1927, he accepted a consultantship with the Hercules Powder Company that grew into a full-time position, in 1929, as head of the chemical service department at the company's experiment station at Kenvil and later at Wilmington.
He became an American citizen in 1931. Because of the Great Depression the chemical research staff of Hercules Powder was reduced repeatedly and the department was eliminated in 1932. Like many others, Piccard was unemployed. Gradually, his efforts to reestablish himself professionally shifted to another field.
Inspired by their boyhood reading of Jules Verne, Jean and Auguste Piccard had long been interested in the scientific use of balloons. In 1913 they had made a sixteen-hour flight in Switzerland, recording the density and temperature of the gas in the balloon. The brothers discussed further plans and designed a balloon, using Auguste's basic ideas and Jean's innovations. Jean Piccard became a research associate with the Bartol Research Foundation of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, in Swarthmore, where William F. G. Swann was developing a center for the study of cosmic rays.
On October 23, 1934, with his wife piloting the balloon, he ascended over 57, 000 feet, returning with data on radiation at various levels that were turned over to others for analysis. The Piccards had not set an altitude record, but they had made significant contributions to science. From then on, Piccard devoted his attention primarily to balloons.
In 1936 he joined the Department of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He became professor the following year and continued to work after his retirement in 1952. In the 1934 flight he used electrically triggered blasting caps, with which he had worked at the powder company, to sever the mooring ropes and to release ballast from containers outside the sealed gondola. This was the first use of such devices in controlling balloons, and the procedure was later applied in other aspects of flight.
Piccard also compared the behavior of groups of smaller balloons to that of single larger balloons. In 1937 a cluster of 98 five- and seven-foot balloons, which he called the "Pleiades, " carried him in an open gondola to a height of 10, 000 feet, with Jeannette Piccard directing the ground crew at the launching. The Piccards planned another stratospheric ascent, using a cluster of larger balloons to lift their gondola to 100, 000 feet. Much of the developmental work was finished, but for lack of financial support this "Helios" project was not completed.
Piccard and his students experimented with balloons of different shapes and various types of equipment. In 1946-1947 they developed the prototype of the "Skyhook" balloons used by the navy for meteorological research. During the next decade more than 2, 000 of these balloons were launched in many parts of the world. He translated Einstein's "Physics and Reality" into English for the Journal of the Franklin Institute (March 1936).
During the summer of 1945 he worked with the U. S. Army Air Document Research Center in London, interviewing Germans in regard to aeronautical technology. Piccard continued to be involved in high-altitude flight research as late as 1962, when he discussed problems of astronauts in pressurized suits with Robert Gilruth, a former student who was then the director of the NASA Space Center at Houston.
He died in Minneapolis.
Jean Felix Piccard was famous as the inventor of clustered high-altitude balloons, he contributed in many ways to the advance of ballooning. His work also produced a number of devices such as a frost-resistant window for balloon gondolas and airplanes and a balloon gas valve with a metal screen to prevent explosions of the hydrogen. He obtained patents on inventions ranging from blasting caps to an X-ray-transparent plaster for use in surgical casts. He published approximately seventy-five papers. In 1991 Piccard was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame.
On August 19, 1919 he married Jeannette Ridlon, daughter of a Chicago surgeon. They had three children.
