Meanwhile, his twin brother, Jean, had emigrated to the United States where he had become a chemistry professor, and with his wife Jeanette made another ascent into the stratosphere. Jean's son, Donald, continued the aeronautic tradition by pioneering the revival of hot-air ballooning in the 1960s.
Auguste Piccard, Commander of the Legion of Honour and the Order of Leopold, was famous for spectacular inventions but he was also a scientist of universal scope. His thesis in physics concerned the magnetisation of water. He identified Uranium 235, which he called "Actinuran." An experiment he conducted in a balloon, proved part of Einstein's Theory of Relativity which had been called into question. He constructed the most precise scales, galvanometers and seismographs of his era. His obsession with exactitude earned him the nickname of "the extra decimal place".

It was hardly surprising that the cartoonist Hergé saw Auguste Piccard as the archetypal boffin and used him as the model for his character, Professor Calculus, in the adventures of Tintin.

Auguste Piccard died in Lausanne on March 25, 1962.