from the California Institute of Technology in 1942 and 1947, having served in the South Pacific during World War II as a photo interpreter.

Menard began his professional career in 1949, in the Sea Floor Studies Section of San Diego's Navy Electronics Laboratory.

Following a year in Washington, D.C. as technical advisor in the Office of Science and Technology (1965–66), Menard served as Director of the University of California's Institute of Marine Resources.

[2] In April 1978, H. William Menard became the United States Geological Survey's tenth Director but remained only through the balance of the Carter administration.

Menard had been a marine geologist with the Naval Electronics Laboratory in San Diego for several years and then had become a member of the faculty of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.