Robert Ballard

About

Ocean explorer who found the wreckage of the Titanic as well as several other famous lost vessels.

Before Fame

A keen childhood interest in marine life led him to study it in college.

Trivia

Four years after the Titanic, he uncovered the remains of the German battleship Bismarck, and in 1998 he found the U.S. carrier Yorktown sunk during WWII.

Family Life

He married Barbra Ballard in 1991. He and Barbra have four children named Emily, Doug, Todd and Ben. His parents were of German and British descent, and his father was an engineer for the North American Aviation company.

Associated With

He was inspired to study what's at the bottom of the oceans by Jules Verne's classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.