Auguste Antoine Piccard (28 January 1884 – 24 March 1962) was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer known for his record-breaking hydrogen balloon flights, with which he studied the Earth's upper atmosphere and became the first person to enter the Stratosphere.

Supported by the Belgian Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS), Piccard constructed his gondola.

An important motivation for his research in the upper atmosphere was measurements of cosmic radiation, which were supposed to give experimental evidence for the theories of Albert Einstein, whom Piccard knew from the Solvay conferences and who was a fellow alumnus of ETH.

Seventeen hours later, after being given up for dead, they returned safely from an estimated height of more than 52,000 feet, almost ten miles, shattering every aircraft altitude record."

During this flight, they became the first human beings to enter the stratosphere,[4] and were able to gather substantial data on the upper atmosphere, as well as measure cosmic rays.

Above the heavy steel capsule, a large flotation tank was attached and filled with a low density liquid for buoyancy.