Robert Ballard (underwater archaeologist)

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Robert Duane Ballard (born June 30, 1942 in Wichita , Kansas ) is an American underwater archaeologist , professor of oceanography and founder and director of the Institute for Archaeological Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island (URI). He was best known for the discovery of the wrecks of the Titanic and the Bismarck .

biography

Ballard is the son of Chester Patrick "Chet" Ballard, who worked for the aircraft manufacturer North American Aviation as chief engineer of the Minuteman missile program, and his wife Harriet Nell (née May). He acquired his enthusiasm for the deep sea through books, cinema and television films about the underwater world such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Jacques Cousteau .

In 1965 Ballard received his bachelor's degree in chemistry and geology from the University of California, Santa Barbara . He graduated from the University of Hawaii with a Master of Science (MS) in geophysics in 1966. In 1974 he received his doctorate with a mapping work of the seabed of the Gulf of Maine in geological oceanography at the University of Rhode Island with Jelle Zeilinga de Boer .

In 1977, Ballard was a member of the expedition team that discovered submarine hydrothermal springs, the so-called Black Smokers , near the Galapagos Islands for the first time with the research boat Alvin . These springs have a temperature of around 400 ° C and emit a fountain of black, smoky water. A water sample showed a pH value of 2.8 - which corresponds to the acidity of wine vinegar .

From 1993 Ballard was seen for a season in the credits of the television series SeaQuest DSV and gave viewers information about the oceans.

Ballard was first married to Marjorie Constance Jacobsen since July 1, 1966, with whom he has two sons, Todd Alan and Douglas Matthew. The marriage ended in divorce in 1990. On January 12, 1991, he married the documentary film producer Barbara Hanford Earle. The marriage also resulted in two children, William Benjamin Aymar Ballard (* 1994) and Emily Rose Ballard (* 1997).

Marine archeology (wreck search)

Ballard at the 2008 TED conference

Ballard became known through the discovery of numerous shipwrecks. On September 1, 1985, he and Jean-Louis Michel found the wreck of the Titanic , which had sunk in 1912. He financed the search by initially inspecting the remains of the sunken US nuclear submarines USS Scorpion and USS Thresher on a secret mission with a diving robot on behalf of the US Navy .

He also discovered the German battleship Bismarck and the US aircraft carrier USS Yorktown from World War II . In the late 1980s, Ballard found a Phoenician ship from the 7th century BC. BC , one of the oldest wrecks ever found. In 1995 he dived with the US Navy deep submersible boat NR-1 again in the Mediterranean for wrecks on a trade route between Carthage and Rome .

Black Sea

From 1999 to the end of 2000, Ballard and a team carried out a series of expeditions along the Turkish coast of the Black Sea . In doing so, they looked for remains of artifacts to substantiate the thesis that the former coast of the Black Sea, which was inwardly of the sea, had already been settled by humans. In the west of Sinope , three old shipwrecks were first discovered at a depth of 100 m. Wreck A and Wreck C were estimated to date from the late Roman Empire (second to fourth centuries AD), while wreck B was probably assigned to the late ancient Byzantine Empire (fifth to seventh centuries AD). In the west of Sinope a wreck was discovered at a depth of 320 m, including the cargo, which was in a very good state of preservation due to the anoxic water. Radiocarbon measurements revealed an origin between 410 and 520 AD.

In November 2000, Ballard found traces of an ancient settlement on the coast shelf of the Black Sea. For him, this was an important indication of the correctness of the Flood thesis of the marine geologists William Ryan and Walter C. Pitman ( Columbia University ). After the end of the last ice age , the sea level of the Mediterranean would have risen and would have breached the natural dam to the Black Sea about 7,500 years ago.

In 2019 he led an expedition that went in search of Amelia Earhart near the island of Nikumaroro .

Works (selection)

items

  • Deep sea research: diving trip into the Ore Mountains. In: Geo-Magazin. Hamburg 1979, 12, pp. 6-32. Informative experience report. ISSN  0342-8311

Awards (excerpt)

Web links

Commons : Robert Ballard  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Revelation: "Titanic" search served as a cover for a secret mission. In: Spiegel Online . May 29, 2008, accessed May 10, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Ballard Finds Traces of Ancient Habitation Beneath Black Sea , National Geographic News, Sept. 13, 2000.
  3. ^ Walter Pitman and William Ryan: Deluge. A riddle is being deciphered. Lübbe , Bergisch Gladbach 1999, 384 pages, hardcover, ISBN 978-3-7857-0878-1 .
  4. ↑ chs: Amelia Earhart: "Titanic" finder wants to track down legendary wreck. In: Spiegel Online . August 13, 2019, accessed May 10, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Ballard, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ballard, Robert Duane (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American underwater archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Wichita , Kansas