Piccard, Jacques, << pee KAHR or pih KAHRD, zhahk >> (1922-2008), was a Swiss oceanographic engineer. In 1960, he and Lieutenant Don Walsh of the United States Navy descended 35,800 feet (10,910 meters) into the Pacific Ocean in the Trieste, a bathyscaph (deep-sea diving ship). In 1969, Piccard designed an underwater craft for studying ocean currents. That year, he and five other scientists drifted in it along the Gulf Stream, a large current off the east coast of the United States. Piccard was born on July 28, 1922, in Brussels, Belgium, and died on Nov. 1, 2008. His father, Auguste, was a noted Swiss physicist. 
