Bertrand Piccard is a Swiss explorer, psychiatrist, and environmentalist, born into a family of scientific explorers. His grandfather, Auguste Piccard, was a balloonist and undersea explorer, and his father, Jacques Piccard, was an undersea explorer. Piccard developed an early interest in flight and human behavior in extreme situations, overcoming an initial fear of heights to become a pioneer in hang gliding and microlight flying in the 1970s.