Born in Brussels on July 28, 1922, Jacques Piccard initially studied economics. His contacts with the business world helped to raise funds for his father's second bathyscaphe.
Jacques then changed his career and worked with his father to build what was to become the bathyscaphe Trieste. Diving with Auguste, he broke numerous records before himself capturing the World Record for the deepest ever dive, 7 miles down to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

After his father's death, he continued the family mission constructing four mesoscaphes - submersibles designed for medium depths. These were:

The Auguste Piccard, the world's first passenger submarine. At the 1964 Swiss National Exhibition in Lausanne, she took 33,000 tourists to the depths of Lake Geneva.