What is robert ballard famous for

Among the most accomplished and well-known of the world's deep-sea explorers, Dr. Robert Ballard is best known for his historic discoveries of hydrothermal vents, the sunken R. Titanic , the German battleship Bismarck , and numerous other contemporary and ancient shipwrecks around the world. During his long career, he has conducted more than deep-sea expeditions using the latest in exploration technology.

In President George W. He is currently a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. I am a marine geologist who first studied the continental margins of North America, but then shifted my interests to the volcanic, tectonic, and hydrothermal processes of the Mid-Ocean Ridges. Later in my career, I developed a secondary interest in marine archeology and maritime history.

Robert ballard family

I am also passionate about education and outreach activities encouraging the next generation to build careers in ocean, engineering, and technical fields. I grew up in San Diego, California a short walk from the Pacific Ocean where I spent most of my childhood free time initially walking along its sandy beaches. I was lucky to have a lot of people along the way encouraging me to follow my dream to become an oceanographer including my parents, teachers, and eventually oceanographers themselves.

I love putting together teams of individuals from multiple disciplines and inspiring them to take on extremely complex challenges. I find when teams think goals are impossible to do and then actually accomplish those goals, it inspires them to take on even more challenging goals in life. I first went to sea on an oceanographic cruise when I was seventeen years old.

Throughout my education, I spent summers doing something associated with oceanography and ocean engineering. That was followed by a long series of summer jobs working with a team of engineers designing deep-diving submersibles, becoming a dolphin trainer during graduate school, and eventually becoming a Naval Officer assigned to the ALVIN submersible program at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where I spent the next thirty years of my career.