Adventure is in the blood of the Swiss psychiatrist turned world-famous balloonist, Dr Bertrand Piccard.
His grandfather, Auguste, Professor of Physics at the University of Brussels, was the first man to reach the stratosphere in a balloon, setting an altitude record in August 1932. And as the inventor of the bathyscaphe he dived to a record 36,300 feet in the Pacific.
Bertrand was born in 1958 and was fascinated by flight. He was also a dab hand, trying everything from hang-gliding to paragliding. At 16 he became the European aerobatics champion and, not surprisingly, set a new world altitude record for the sport. His first hot-air balloon flight came in 1979 and in 1992 he won the Chrysler Transatlantic balloon challenge.
He was drawn to psychiatry by a passion second only to flight, trying to understand how humans react in extreme situations. He opened a practice on Lake Geneva, where he lives with his wife and three daughters.
Dr Piccard took time off from work to launch his first round-the-world balloon flight in January 1997 in Breitling I, an attempt which ended in failure five hours later due to a technical hitch.
Breitling II was launched 12 months later in the face of mounting competition from other round-the-world balloonists.
While this second attempt reached Burma and set a world record for flight duration, it was still well short of the ultimate prize, an achievement which, if all goes well, is only a few hours away.