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Robert Ballard
(30 Jun 1942 - )
American oceanographer and explorer who explored the deep-sea wreck of Titanic. He discovered the first deep-sea thermal vents and investigated the unique marine life around black smokers.
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Science Quotes by Robert Ballard (5 quotes)
I feel like Leakey handing it off to Jane Goodall.
— Robert Ballard
Explaining how during the ocean search for Amelia Earhart’s airplane, at age 77, he was sharing leadership with Allison Fundis, whom he hoped would take his place in future ocean exploration. He compared the transition to paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey as mentor to Jane Goodall.
If you plan it out, and it seems logical to you, then you can do it. I discovered the power of a plan.
— Robert Ballard
Quoted in biography on website of the National Geographic Channel, Australia.
Science explorers are like an ideal gas. They can expand to fill any volume, but they can only do work under pressure. … And the pressure’s on.
— Robert Ballard
Expressing confidence in his latest ocean search, for Amelia Earhart’s airplane. As quoted in Julie Cohn, 'Finding Amelia Earhart’s Plane Seemed Impossible. Then Came a Startling Clue', New York Times (12 Aug 2019)
The fact that this chain of life existed [at volcanic vents on the seafloor] in the black cold of the deep sea and was utterly independent of sunlight—previously thought to be the font of all Earth’s life—has startling ramifications. If life could flourish there, nurtured by a complex chemical process based on geothermal heat, then life could exist under similar conditions on planets far removed from the nurturing light of our parent star, the Sun.
— Robert Ballard
Quoted in Peter Douglas Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (2000), 1, without citation.
The poet laureate of the sea became Rachel Carson.
— Robert Ballard
From Introduction to Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us (2003 edition), xviii. The original edition was published 1950.
See also:
- 30 Jun - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Ballard's birth.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
