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Jacques Piccard (born July 28, 1922) is a Swiss explorer and engineer, known for having developed underwater vehicles for studying ocean currents. He is the only person (as of 2006), along with Lt. Don Walsh, to have reached the deepest point on the earth's surface, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench.

Jacques Piccard was born in Brussels, Belgium to Auguste Piccard, who was himself an adventurer and engineer.

On January 23, 1960, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, reached the ocean floor in the Challenger Deep with his bathyscaphe Trieste. The depth of the descent was measured at 10,916 meters (35,813 feet), later more accurate measurements in 1995 have found the Challenger Deep to be less deep at 10,911 m (35,797 ft). The descent took almost five hours and the two men spent barely twenty minutes on the ocean floor before undertaking the 3 hour 15 minute ascent.

Jacques Piccard constructed four submarines:

• Auguste Piccard, the world's first passenger submarine.
• Ben Franklin (PX-15)
• F.-A. Forel
• PX-44

On July 14, 1969, just two days before the Apollo launch, the Ben Franklin, also known as the Grumman/Piccard PX-15 mesoscaphe was towed to the high-velocity center of the Gulf Stream off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida. Once on site, the Ben Franklin with its six man, international crew descended to 1,000 feet off of Riviera Beach, Florida and drifted 1,400 miles north with the current for more than four weeks, reemerging near Maine.

A crew of six was carefully chosen. Jacques Piccard was the mission leader; Erwin Aebersold, another Swiss, was Piccard’s handpicked pilot and main assistant to Piccard and project engineer during the Franklin's design and construction. Grumman selected a Navy submariner named Don Kazimir to be captain. The U.S. Navy Oceanographic Office sent Frank Busby to conduct a bottom survey along the drift track over the Continental Shelf and the Royal Navy sent Ken Haigh, an acoustic specialist, who studied underwater acoustics and ran sonic experiments up and down the water column throughout the mission. The sixth man was Chet May. As early as 1967, NASA had established a Space Station Office and began to study the feasibility of humans living in space, in completely contained environments, for prolonged periods. May was a NASA scientist; his specialty was ‘man working in space.’ Werner von Braun heard about the Franklin mission, visited the sub in Palm Beach, and considered the mission a kind of analogue to a prolonged mission in space. He appointed May as a NASA observer to accompany the mission and his role was to study the effects of prolonged isolation on the human crew.

In addition to studying the warm water current which flows northeast off the U.S. East Coast, the sub also made space exploration history by studying the behavior of aquanauts in a sealed, self-contained, self-sufficient capsule for NASA. The mission is the focus of a program that has aired on the Science Channel.

During the course of the dive, NASA conducted exhaustive analyses of virtually every aspect of onboard life. They measured sleep quality and patterns, sense of humor and behavioral shifts, physical reflexes, and the effects of a long-term routine on the crew. The submarine's record-shattering dive influenced the design of Apollo and Skylab missions and continued to guide NASA scientists as they devised future manned space-flight missions.

Named for the American patriot and inventor who was one of the first to chart the Stream, the 50-foot Ben Franklin was built between 1966 and 1968 high in the mountains in Switzerland for deep-ocean explorer Jacques Piccard and the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation. It has been restored and now resides in the Vancouver Maritime Museum in Vancouver, Canada.

Jacques Piccard is the founder of the Foundation for the Study and Protection of Seas and Lakes, based in Cully, Switzerland.

The Piccard family is noted for undertaking challenges. Jacques' father Auguste Piccard twice beat the record for reaching the highest altitude in a balloon, in 1931-32. Jacques' son Bertrand Piccard commanded the first flight around the world nonstop with a balloon, in March 1999.

• Auguste Piccard (physicist, aeronaut, balloonist, hydronaut)
  • Jacques Piccard (hydronaut)
    • Bertrand Piccard (aeronaut, balloonist)
• Jean Felix Piccard (organic chemist, aeronaut, and balloonist)
  • Jeannette Piccard (wife of Jean Felix) (aeronaut and balloonist)
    • Don Piccard (balloonist)

• Page from Jacques' son Bertrand Piccard's website
• Official press release regarding Challenger Deep operation.
• The Ben Franklin - Grumman/Piccard PX-15.
• From Sea to Shining Sea: The Story of the Ben Franklin Gulf Stream Drift Mission.