Robert Ballard

Among the most accomplished and well known of the world’s deep-sea explorers, Dr. Robert Ballard is best known for his historic discovery of the RMS Titanic lost in its watery grave more than 12,000 beneath the cold water of the North Atlantic. During his long career, he has conducted more than 100 deep-sea expeditions using the latest in exploration technology.

A pioneer in the early use of deep diving submarines, he was on the first manned expedition of the largest mountain range on Earth, the Mid-Ocean Ridge. Later he led an expedition off the Galapagos Islands that discovered new life forms on Earth, a discovery that has revolutionized our understanding of the origin of life on our planet and increased the likelihood of discovering life elsewhere in the Solar System. Following his discovery of the Titanic, he went to find other lost legends in the sea including the German Battleship Bismarck, the aircraft carrier Yorktown lost during the Battle of Midway, and President Kennedy’s PT-109.

In addition to being a very popular lecturer, Dr. Ballard has pioneered distant-learning in the classrooms of America and around the world with his JASON Project, an award-winning educational program that reaches more than 1.7 million students and 38,000 teachers annually. His books on his discovery of the Titanic and Bismarck were both #1 bestsellers on The New York Times and London Times lists, and his recent Return to Titanic special on the National Geographic Channel was the highest rated show in their history.

He was given the Explorer’s Club’s and the National Geographic Society’s most prestigious awards; the Explorer’s Medal and the Hubbard Medal as well as the Lindbergh Award. Most recently the President of the United States presented him with the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal in the Oval Office of the White House.

Dr. Ballard is not only an Explorer-in-Residence for the National Geographic Society, President of the Institute for Exploration, Scientist Emeritus from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, but also the Director of the newly created Institute for Archaeological Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island where he is in search of ancient lost history in the depths of the deep sea.