Dr. Robert Duane "Bob" Ballard (born June 30, 1942) grew up in San Diego, California and became a scuba diver. He is a marine geologist , geophysicist, and submarine explorer affiliated with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He is best known for finding the remains of the RMS Titanic on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1985 after a long search. Other notable finds are the German battleship Bismarck, the USS Yorktown (CV-5), and PT-109, the boat once commanded by John F. Kennedy.
In 1995, Dr. Ballard dove to the wreck of the S.S. Andrea Doria, which capsized and sank off the coast of Massachusetts in 1956 after colliding with another passenger-carrying oceanliner. He has also done important work for the U.S. Navy on the wreck sites of the nuclear-powered submarines U.S.S. Thresher (SSN-593), lost in 1963 and U.S.S. Scorpion (SSN-589) lost in 1968.
Recently he has explored sites underneath the Black Sea and several deep sea Phoenician shipwrecks from the Iron Age off the coast of Israel not far from the ancient port of Ashkelon.
In 2004, Dr. Ballard was appointed professor of oceanography at the Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island.
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