Bob Ballard Biography

Bob Ballard

Taylor Schwartz

Oceanography

Bob Ballard

Robert Ballard has made a tremendous amount of contributions in the area of ocean science. He was born on June 30, 1962 in Kansas, but he grew up in San Diego, California. Growing up near the beach, Ballard became a very skilled swimmer and developed a fascination with the ocean. It was this fascination that led him into his career in oceanography and ocean exploration. Ballard’s college resume is extensive, beginning at The University of California at Santa Barbara, earning a bachelor of science in chemistry and geology. From there he earned Ph.D.’s from UCSB, The University of Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, and the University of Rhode Island. He also enlisted into the U.S. Army, which lead him to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It was at the institute where he would begin to make his major contributions to oceanography and ocean exploration. During his time at Woods Hole, not only would he shed new light on plate tectonics, he was at the forefront of the methods in which deep sea exploration was accomplished. These methods were instrumental to his first major deep sea discovery of the Titanic. He would also later go on to discover the German battleship Bismarck, eight sailing ships, as well as the U.S.S. Yorktown.

On September 1, 1985, a group of scientists from Woods Hole Deep Submergence Lab Massachusetts, led by Ballard were successful in being the first to locate the wreck of the famous Titanic after many failed attempts. The Titanic was a British luxury liner that was claimed to be unsinkable before hitting an iceberg during its first voyage, killing more than 1,500 people. To locate the titanic Ballard and his team used the ‘Argo’, a sled- like device connected to TV cameras that stretched two and a half miles deep sweeping the ocean floor and sending pictures back to the ship which scientists intently observed. After observing pictures for...