Jeannette Piccard - Later Life, Death of Jean Piccard

Later Life, Death of Jean Piccard

Jean and Jeannette felt they had succeeded by reaching the stratosphere, and they became popular lecturers. They prepared brochures and souvenirs to attract attention to the flight, one titled "Who Said We Couldn't Do It." But they had developed perhaps unreasonable expectations that lucrative university positions would come to them. Both wrote to dozens of colleges and universities, aiming high—even at college presidencies, trying to secure positions, but they received only rejections. In December 1934, Jeannette wrote to Swann to ask if Jean might become a member of the chemistry staff of Bartol Research at the Franklin Institute, and also offered her services, but was turned down. Luckily, they met a new advocate while on lecture tour to Minneapolis. Thanks to John Ackerman of the department of aeronautical engineering at the University of Minnesota, Jean became an untenured professor in Minnesota by 1936, teaching and doing aeronautical studies until 1946 when he received tenure. During 1943, Jeannette was briefly an executive secretary at the housing section of the Minnesota Office of Civil Defense.

In 1946 until mid-1947, the Piccards were consultants to General Mills (the cereal company and dominant industry in Minneapolis) working under Otto Winzen, who Jean had met through the university. Winzen and Jean proposed a stratosphere flight with 100 cluster balloons and secured a government contract with the Navy. Featured in Navy press releases, Jean was named a project scientist responsible for gondola design and for testing the balloon film materials. But he balked, both at making weekly status reports that made him feel like a lower-level employee, and at the prospect of General Mills owning the patents to his ideas. Working as a consultant, Jeannette threatened to break off ties with the Navy and General Mills unless she was allowed to fly with Jean. Unfortunately this began a rift between General Mills and the Piccards. They were both were fired in 1947, for they were too critical of Winzen and General Mills staff.

Jean retired from the University of Minnesota when he was 68, never giving up his dream of returning to the stratosphere. DeVorkin quoted a newspaper in 1952, "to Adventurer Piccard, no gondola probing the unexplored purple twilight of the stratosphere would be complete without him and his wife in it". Jean died in 1963.

Gilruth asked Jeannette to work as a consultant at NASA. She accepted and lived in a house in Houston she shared with another woman. Jeannette spoke to the scientific community and to the public at NASA about the space program from 1964 to 1970, when Project Apollo was created and Apollo 11 made the first manned Moon landing in 1969. Gilruth then noticed a shift in her interests, away from space and towards religion.