Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh emerge from the bathyscaphe Trieste following their successful descent to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench in January 1960. Walsh and Piccard were the first people to reach the trench’s — and Earth’s — lowest point, Challenger Deep, some 35,800 feet below the ocean surface. Piccard, who died in 2008, was posthumously awarded the Hubbard Medal, the National Geographic highest honor, at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on June 14, 2012.

© © Thomas J. Abercrombie / National Geographic