Robert D. Ballard was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1942 and grew up in Pacific Beach, San Diego, California. Ballard has attributed his early interest in underwater exploration to reading the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, living by the ocean in San Diego and his fascination with the groundbreaking expeditions of the bathyscaphe Trieste.

In 1965, Ballard graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, earning undergraduate degrees in chemistry and geology. After getting married, Ballard began working full time for Andreas Rechnitzer's Ocean Systems Group at North American Aviation. Ballard had worked at North American Aviation since 1962 when his father, Chet Ballard, the chief engineer at North American Aviation's Minuteman missile program, helped him get part-time jobs. When Ballard first joined North American, he worked with Rechnitzer on North American's failed proposal to build the submersible Alvin for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

While a student in Santa Barbara, California, he completed the US Army's ROTC program and got an Army commission. His first graduate degree (MS, 1966) was in geophysics from the University of Hawaii Institute of Geophysics where he trained porpoises and whales to make a living. After getting married, Ballard began working again for Andreas Rechnitzer's Ocean Systems Group at North American Aviation.

Ballard was working towards a Ph.D. in marine geology at the University of Southern California in 1967, when he was called to active duty. Upon his request, Ballard was transferred into the US Navy as an oceanographer. The Navy assigned Ballard as a liaison between the Office of Naval Research and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

After leaving the Navy in 1970, Ballard continued working at Woods Hole persuading organizations and people, mostly scientists, to fund and use Alvin for undersea research. Four years later Ballard received a Ph.D. in marine geology and geophysics at the University of Rhode Island.

Working with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Ballard's first dive in a submersible was in the Ben Franklin in 1969 off the coast of Florida. Later in the summer of 1970, Ballard began a field mapping project of the Gulf of Maine for his doctoral dissertation. The project used an air gun that sent shock waves underwater to determine the underlying structure of the ocean floor and the submersible Alvin which was used to find and recover a sample from the bedrock.

During the summer of 1975, Ballard was over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge participating in a joint French-American expedition called Project FAMOUS. Project FAMOUS was a detailed study of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge portion of the Mid-ocean ridge. It was on this expedition that, on August 5, Ballard was able to ride down in a bathyscaphe for his first time.

Ballard was the first American to dive down to the Mid-ocean ridge; however his trip was cut short due to an electrical fire. Some time after the bathyscaphe Archimede reached the bottom, it lurched upward and the capsule began filling with smoke. After turning off the oxygen to stop the fire, Ballard and his crew mates used the emergency breathing units, but Ballard's oxygen was not turned on. When Ballard tried to tell his companions by taking off his mask they thought he was panicking and tried to force the mask back on. Ballad was able to make a diver's hand signal that indicated he wasn't getting any air. His companions figured out Ballard's problem and turned on his oxygen and safely made it back to the surface.

Continuing research into the mid-ocean ridge, in 1977 Ballard was asked to be co-scientist with Richard von Herzon on an expedition to the Galapagos Rift off the coast of the Galapagos Islands. Ballard was asked to join the Galapagos Hydrothermal Expedition not because of his knowledge in hydrothermal research, but for his experience with submersibles in volcanic terrain. The mission's goal was to find evidence of volcanic activity and seafloor spreading. During the expedition hydrothermal vents were discovered and, to the surprise of the scientists, the vents were surrounded by marine life. Two years later Ballard co-led a second expedition with biologist Fred Grassle to examine the ecosystem.

The expedition which was featured on the National Geographic Society television special Dive to the Edge of Creation, determined that hydrogen sulfide coming out of the vents provided conditions for bacteria which fed animals that lived by the vents. They discovered various new species including new types of crabs and tube worms.

A black smoker.In April 1979 the Wood Hole Institute team, including Ballard, joined the rest of a joint American-French expedition west of Mexico in the East Pacific Rise section of the mid-ocean ridge. The year before Ballard had joined the French led team at the site, diving in the submersible Cyana, where they searched for hydrothermal vents, but the expedition did not find any active vents. The 1979 expedition was aided by deep-towed still camera sleds that were able to take pictures of the ocean floor making it easier to find the vent locations.

While Ballard had been interested in the sea since an early age, his work at Woods Hole and his SCUBA diving experiences off Massachusetts spurred his interest in shipwrecks, and their exploration. His work in the Navy had involved assisting the development of small, unmanned submersibles which could be tethered to, and controlled from a surface ship, while being outfitted with lighting, cameras, and manipulator arms. As early as 1973, Ballard saw this as way of searching for the wreck of Titanic. In 1977, he led his first expedition, which was unsuccessful.

Ballard undertook an even more daunting task when he and his team went searching for the Bismarck. The water in which she sank is 4,000 feet deeper then where the Titanic sank. Ballard tried to solve the mystery of what exactly sank the mighty German battleship. Was she sunk by the British or scuttled by her own crew? During this expedition, personal tragedy struck the famed explorer. His 21 year old son Todd, who aided his father in the search, was killed in a car accident.

Ballard and his team have also visited the sites of many wrecks of WW2 in the Pacific. His book "Lost Ships Of Guadalcanal" locates and photographs many of the vessels sunk in the infamous "Iron Bottom Sound", the strait between Guadalcanal Island and the Floridas in the Solomon Islands.

In the 1990's Ballard founded the Institute for Exploration, which specializes in deep-sea archaeology and deep-sea geology. It joined forces in 1999 with the Mystic Aquarium located in Mystic, Connecticut. They are a part of the non-profit Sea Research Foundation, Inc.