1882-1945
Rocket Scientist

Overview.

The best rocket research anywhere in the world took place in the United States in the 1920s, and one man, Robert Goddard, was responsible for it. His work on rocketry in the 1920s lay the groundwork for the exploration of outer space that began in the 1960s.

Roots.

Robert Hutchings Goddard was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, receiving a B.S. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1908 and earning a Ph.D. in physics at Clark University three years later. After a year of postdoctoral research at Princeton University, the young scientist returned to Clark to teach physics in 1914 and became a full professor in 1919.

Rocket Man.

While still in public school Goddard had developed an interest in rockets when he read H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds (1898). He came to realize that rockets would be essential for travel...