He was president of the Optical Society of America in 1963[2] and of the American Association of Physics Teachers during 1968–69.
[4] During World War II, Ballard served as a Commander in the United States Navy.
in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and his undergraduate degree from Pomona College.
[4] In 1954 he coauthored Physics Principles (with Edgar P. Slack and Erich Hausmann)[5] In 1964 The Commission on College Physics published Polarized Light which he wrote with William Shurcliff.
A reviewer noted the "straightforward, conversational style" and that "The treatment is mostly non-mathematical but touches on electromagnetic theory, the Poincaré sphere, Stokes vectors, and Mueller matrices with great clarity.