Robert Ballard
Robert Duane Ballard (* June 30, 1942 in Wichita, Kansas) is an American underwater archaeologist, Professor of Oceanography and the founder and director of the Institute for Archaeological Oceanography at the University of Rhode Iceland (URI). He is best known for the discovery of the Titanic and the wreck of the Bismarck.
Biography
Ballard is the son of Patrick Chester "Chet " Ballard, who worked as chief engineer of the Minuteman missile program at aircraft manufacturer North American Aviation, and his wife Harriet Nell (born May ). His enthusiasm for the deep sea he gained through books, movies and television movies about the underwater world such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Jacques Cousteau.
1965 Ballard graduated a Bachelor's degree in chemistry and geology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. At the University of Hawaii, where he graduated in 1966 as Master of Science ( MS) in geophysics. In 1974 he received his doctorate with a mapping approximation work of the seabed of the Gulf of Maine in the subject Geological Oceanography at the University of Rhode Iceland.
Ballard was in 1977 on the expedition team that had discovered with the research submersible Alvin for the first time submarine hydrothermal vents, called black smokers near the Galapagos Islands. These sources have a temperature of about 400 ° C and initiated a fountain of black, smoky water. A sample of water gave a pH value of 2.8 - which corresponds to the degree of acidity of wine vinegar.
From 1993, Ballard was seen for one season in the credits of the television series SeaQuest DSV and gave the audience information about the oceans.
Ballard was in his first marriage since July 1, 1966 married to Marjorie Constance Jacobsen, with whom he has two sons, Todd Alan and Douglas Matthew. The marriage ended in divorce in 1990. On January 12, 1991, he married his second wife, the documentary producer Barbara Hanford Earle. The marriage also had two children, William Benjamin Aymar Ballard (* 1994) and Emily Rose Ballard (* 1997).
Marine Archaeology ( wreck search)
Ballard is best known for the discovery of numerous shipwrecks. He was on September 1, 1985, together with Jean -Louis Michel, the wreck of the Titanic, which sank in 1912. He financed the search by the remains of the sunken U.S. nuclear submarines USS Scorpion and USS Thresher inspected initially in a secret mission with a diving robot commissioned by the U.S. Navy.
He also discovered the German battleship Bismarck and the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Yorktown from the Second World War. The late 1980s, Ballard was a Phoenician ship from the 7th century BC, one of the oldest ever retrieved wrecks. In 1995 he appeared with the U.S. Navy deep submersible NR- 1 again in the Mediterranean after wrecks on a trade route between Carthage and Rome.
Black Sea
From 1999 to late 2000, Ballard with a team a series of expeditions along the Turkish coast of the Black Sea through. They searched for remnants of artifacts to prove the thesis that the former, meereinwärts located the Black Sea coast had already been colonized by humans. To the west of Sinope is first discovered three ancient shipwrecks in 100 m depth. A wreck and wreck C were estimated on the late Roman Empire ( second to fourth century AD ), while B wreck was likely attributable to the late antique Byzantine Empire ( fifth to seventh century AD). To the west of Sinope was discovered at a depth of 320 m, together with a charge very well-preserved wreck that had been through the anoxic water in a very good state of preservation. Radiocarbon measurements provided a date of origin 410-520 AD
In November 2000, Ballard found traces of an ancient settlement on the coastal shelf of the Black Sea. This was an important indicator of the accuracy of the flood - thesis of marine geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman (Columbia University) for him. After the end of the last ice age, therefore the sea level of the Mediterranean would have risen and had breached the natural dam towards the Black Sea 7,500 years ago.
Works (selection)
- The discovery of the Bismarck ( with Rick Archbold ), Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 1990. ISBN 3-550-06443-8
- Engulfed in the Pacific: Guadalcanal ship graveyard (orig. title The Lost Ships of Guadalcanal ) with Rick Archbold. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 1993 ISBN 3-550-06834-4
- Return to Midway ( with Rick Archbold ), Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, 1999. ISBN 3-550-08302-5
- Deep sea, Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, 2000. ISBN 3-548-24771-7
- The mystery of the Titanic ( with Rick Archbold ), Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, 2000. ISBN 3-550-07653-3
- The enigma of Dakar ( with Tony Chiu ), Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, 2000. ISBN 3-548-23782-7
- The Secret of the Lusitania ( with Spencer Dunmore ), Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, 2002. ISBN 3-550-06888-3
- George F. Bass (ed.): The depth. Sunken Treasure on the ocean floor. Herbig, Munich 2006, Hardcover, ISBN 978-3-7766-2483-0