He was born August 10, 1943, in Washington, D.C., and was educated at the Noble and Greenough School (1955–1961), Dartmouth College (BA 1965), and Columbia University (MA, 1967, PhD 1970).

In January, 1975, he was appointed chief of the Branch of Seismology, a group of 140 scientists and staff at the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, playing a lead role in the development of, and initial management of, the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program.

Ward contributed to an understanding of how geologic records of volcanism in western North America relate in detail to motions of tectonic plates under the eastern Pacific Ocean.

[2][3] In a 2009 paper,[4] Ward suggested that "large volumes of SO2 erupted frequently appear to overdrive the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere resulting in very rapid warming."

Since 2009 Ward has been arguing that climate change is caused by ozone depletion and not human-derived CO2 emissions, a hypothesis that is not supported by referred literature.