Among the most accomplished and well known of the world’s deep-sea explorers, Dr. Robert Ballard is best known for his historic discovery of the R.M.S. TITANIC lost in its watery grave more than 12,000 feet beneath the cold water of the North Atlantic.
During his long career, he has conducted more than 100 deep-sea expeditions using the latest in exploration technology. A pioneer in the early use of deep diving submarines, he was on the first manned expedition of the largest mountain range on Earth, the Mid-Ocean Ridge. Later he lead an expedition off the Galapagos Islands that discovered new life forms on Earth, a discovery that has revolutionized our understanding of the origin of life on our planet and increased the likelihood of discovering life elsewhere in the Solar System.
Following his discovery of the Titanic, he went to find other lost legends in the sea including the German Battleship Bismarck, the aircraft carrier Yorktown lost during the Battle of Midway, and President Kennedy’s PT-109. In addition to being a very popular lecturer, Dr. Ballard has pioneered distant-learning in the classrooms of America and around the world with his Jason Project, an awarding winning educational program that reaches more than 1.7 million students and 38,000 teachers annually.
His books on his discovery of the Titanic and Bismarck were both #1 Best Sellers on the New York Times and London Times lists, and his recent Return to Titanic special on National Geographic Channel was the highest rated show in their history. He was given the Explorer’s Club’s and the National Geographic Society’s most prestigious awards; the Explorer’s Medal and the Hubbard Medal as well as the Lindbergh Award. Most recently the President of the United States presented him with the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal in the Oval Office of the White House. He is not only an Explorer-in-Residence for the National Geographic Society, President of the Institute for Exploration, Scientist Emeritus from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, but also the Director of the newly created Institute for Archaeological Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island where he is in search of ancient lost history in the depths of the deep sea.
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Speech Topics
- Thinking out of the box and taking risks to achieve long-term goals.
- That you don’t really know where the boundaries of achievement are unless you push the envelope and find it.
- Great goals require a team to achieve and that I always try to hire people smarter than I.
- Realizing that it is your dreams, and your passions, that provide you with the motivation to overcome failure to find success.
- That life is not failure avoidance, that it is something we all experience, but that failure teaches you critical lessons and that you pass through failure to achieve success
