![]() Around these deep fissures exist colonies of strange tubeworms and other life forms that live without light by obtaining nutrients from hot plumes of mineral-rich water spouting like smoke from the earth's crust. He led the team that discovered hydrothermal vents, the major oceanographic find of the last decade. Ballard's quick rise to oceanographic pre-eminence. ''Bob has an extraordinary ability to find interesting things on the bottom,'' observed a colleague in explaining Mr. Ballard has long been blessed with the special luck of a successful explorer as well as the special knowledge of a leading scientist. Last July he was one of four scientists to receive a Secretary of the Navy Research Chair in Oceanography, which carries $800,000 in research support.Īs the spectacular find of the Titanic would suggest, Mr. Much of his work, including the development of the Argo, has been sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. Ballard also finished his doctorate in marine geology and geophysics, which he received from the University of Rhode Island in 1974 after completing a dissertation on the geology of the Gulf of Maine.Īt the institute on Cape Cod, he has retained close ties to the Navy. He has gone on to direct the design of other pioneering undersea vehicles, including the Argo, which last week gave the world glimpses of the Titanic nearly two and a half miles under the north Atlantic.Īs his international scientific stature quickly soared, Mr. There, his passion for undersea geology and skill in submarine engineering could be joined in the development and use of the Alvin, a manned submersible craft sponsored by the Navy. In 1969 he became a civilian researcher at Woods Hole, where, he says, ''everything clicked for me.'' Ballard and his new wife drove to Boston ''with a check for $1,000 taped under the dashboard'' to take up his assignment with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as liaison officer for the Office of Naval Research. ''They gave me two trained porpoises who trained me,'' he recalls. ![]() Instead he moved to Hawaii, where he attended the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Hawaii and tended educated porpoises at Sea Life Park. After earning his undergraduate degree in chemistry and geology at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1965, he applied to Scripps for graduate work and, he recalls, was turned down because he lacked knowledge of physics. Ballard has delved into marine chemistry, porpoise training, oceanography, geophysics, engineering and geology. In an unusually broad academic career, Mr. When not undersea he can often be found, his colleagues say, watching his sons at the local hockey rink. He and his wife of 19 years, Marjorie, live on Cape Cod with their two teen-age sons. Robert Duane Ballard, who was born in 1942 in Wichita, Kan., is a senior scientist and head of the Deep Submergence Lab at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass. His father had been appointed naval representative to the institute. It was later, as a teen-ager in San Diego, that he ''fell for the sea'' while fishing from the long pier at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. His earliest memories, says the man who has spent more time on the bottom of the sea than any other, are of jets pushing ever higher at the Federal aircraft testing ground in California's Mohave Desert, where his father was a flight engineer. As a youth, Robert Ballard's eyes were constantly drawn skyward.
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