Jeannette Ridlon Piccard was born in Chicago, Illinois, one of nine children. From an early age, she showed interest in both science and religion, and at the age of 11, she declared that she wanted to become a priest, an unimaginable ambition in those days.
She attended Bryn Mawr College, and after receiving her bachelor’s degree in philosophy and psychology, she continued to study organic chemistry at the University of Chicago. In 1919, at 24, she met Jean Felix Piccard, who became her scientific partner and collaborator. After their wedding, they moved to Switzerland for several years, where her husband taught at the University of Lausanne.
During this period, Piccard’s brother-in-law, a physics professor, worked on a balloon, researching the upper atmosphere. In 1926, on their return to the US, her husband began to work as director of research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined his brother’s balloon project. In 1933, he designed a balloon for the Chicago ‘Century of Progress’ trade show, and Thomas G. W. Settle piloted it.
When the balloon returned to the Piccards, the couple decided to fly into the stratosphere. He was in charge of the science, and she of the piloting. The first step to complete the mission was for her to have a piloting license, and on October 23rd, 1934, at the age of 39, Piccard became the first licensed woman balloonist in the US and one of the first in the world.
The second step for reaching their goal was to gain financial support, which turned out to be a difficult task for a woman pilot, rejected several times because “it was too risky for a woman and a mother.” Eventually, the Piccards raised enough funding, and on October 23rd, 1934, the couple accented from Dearborn, Michigan, and landed in Cadiz, Ohio, after an eight hours flight, in which they achieved an altitude of 57,579 feet, and she made history as the first woman in the stratosphere. She kept her record for 29 years until 1963, when the Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.
After the flight, she received publicity for her achievement, and the Piccards began to give lectures on their adventure, promoting women in aviation.
In 1936, they moved to Minnesota, where her husband received a teaching post, and she continued her education, earning a doctorate in 1942, at the age of 47. In 1963, her husband died, and Piccard was offered a position as consultant to the Director of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center, overseeing the moon landing in 1969.
Over time, her interest shifted from space to religion, and her childhood dream of becoming a priest was rekindled. In 1971, only one year after the Episcopal Church began to admit female deacons, she was ordained a deacon. Three years later, at the age of 79, she was ordained as an Episcopal priest at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, alongside ten other women who became known as the Philadelphia Eleven. Afterward, she served as an assistant pastor at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church and volunteered as a chaplain at St. Luke’s Hospital in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She died from cancer at 86, after a lifetime of challenging the conventions of what a respectable lady could and should do.
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