Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Jean-Luc Picard
9. What's In A Namesake?
Robert Justman wrote in the Star Trek Encyclopaedia that Jean-Luc Picard was named for the Swiss oceanographer and engineer Jacques Piccard. This Piccard came from a family of adventurers, and made his mark on history - beneath the waves.
Piccard, along with Lt. Don Walsh of the U.S. Navy, were the first humans in history to descend to the bottom of the ocean, in the Challenger Deep. There, using a craft designed by Piccard and his father, Auguste, which was named the Trieste (incidentally, the Trieste was the name of the ship that discovered Data on Omicron Theta), they managed to reach the seabed in the Mariana Trench.
They remained there for 20 minutes, but the ship was ill equipped for scientific exploration, so began its ascent, without incident. Nine years later, Piccard designed a new type of sub that he named the Ben Franklin. It was dropped into the Gulf Stream, crewed by six men, and floated all the way to Maine, drifting with the currents. This international team studied the effects of isolation on the crew, something that would become crucial to preparing astronauts for space missions.
Piccard was awarded the Howard N. Potts Medal in 1972, was a founding member of the World Cultural Council, and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Louvain in 2008.