Photograph by Emory Kristof
Photograph by Becky Hale
Among the most accomplished and well known of the world's deep-sea explorers, Robert Ballard is best known for his historic discoveries of hydrothermal vents, the sunken R.M.S. Titanic, the German battleship Bismarck, and numerous other contemporary and ancient shipwrecks around the world. During his long career he has conducted more than 120 deep-sea expeditions using the latest in exploration technology, and he is a pioneer in the early use of deep-diving submarines.
Ballard has pioneered distance learning in the classrooms of America and around the world with the JASON Project, an award-winning educational program that reaches more than 1 million students and 25,000 teachers annually. He has received prestigious awards from the Explorers Club and the National Geographic Society—the Explorers Medal and the Hubbard Medal, respectively—as well as the Lindbergh Award. In 2003 President George W. Bush presented him with the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal in the Oval Office of the White House.
Ballard is president of the Institute for Exploration, scientist emeritus from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Director of the newly created Center for Ocean Exploration at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. His new ship of exploration, the E/V Nautilus operated by his Ocean Exploration Trust spends four to five months at sea each year and will be exploring the Black Sea, Aegean, Mediterranean, and Atlantic Ocean in 2011, beaming back his exploration around the clock on Nautilus Live.
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Inside National Geographic Magazine
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Titanic Revisited
Fortune hunters, tourists, and time have made the seafloor wreck site a titanic mess. The man who found the famous ship 19 years ago returns to survey the damage.
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Deep Black Sea
Ancient shipwrecks and telltale shells bring to life epics of distant trade and a prehistoric flood.
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Being Bob Ballard
The explorer went looking for deepwater shipwrecks. As usual, he found them—but not without deep trouble.
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The Search for PT 109
Explorer Bob Ballard goes after JFK's PT 109, and Senator Ted Kennedy recalls a heroic brother's return.
Kids
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Nat Geo E-Team
What are Bob Ballard and the rest of the National Geographic Explorers up to? Meet the E-Team and learn about their projects in this interactive mural.
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Interview With Explorer Bob Ballard
Ocean explorer Bob Ballard talks about growing up and what he was like as a kid.
In Their Words
Fifty percent of our country that we own, have all legal jurisdiction, have all rights to do whatever we want, lies beneath the sea, and we have better maps of Mars than that fifty percent.
—Robert Ballard
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Videos
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TED Talk on Exploring Oceans
Ocean explorer Robert Ballard takes us on a mind-bending trip to hidden worlds underwater.
Audio
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00:09:00 Robert Ballard Part 2
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00:11:00 Robert Ballard Part 1
From the Titanic to the Lusitania, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Robert Ballard has found many of the iconic shipwrecks of our time. Ballard joins Boyd to talk about his passion for undersea exploration and what he hopes to find next.
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