Auguste Piccard

Born 28 January 1884, Piccard was a Swiss physicist who turned his attention to the limits of human reach. In 1931 he piloted a record-breaking hydrogen balloon into the upper atmosphere, becoming the first person to enter that realm and study it directly. He described what he saw - the Earth appearing as a flat disk with an upturned edge - in a science magazine that year. Nearly two decades later he reversed direction entirely, inventing the bathyscaphe FNRS-2 and sending it unmanned into the ocean's depths in 1948. His twin brother Jean Felix followed a parallel path in exploration, and the family's reach extended across generations: his son Jacques, nephew Bertrand, sister-in-law Jeannette, and son Don all carried the name into new frontiers. Piccard died 24 March 1962, having bracketed the world top and bottom.