1882-1945

American Physicist

Goddard was an early advocate of rocketry and space travel and is one of the principal inventors of the liquid fluid rocket. Beginning in 1926 he was able to launch a series of successful rockets, eventually obtaining modest financial support for his work. Many of the concepts developed by him are used in current rocket design. Goddard's contribution to rocket science was only belatedly acknowledged by the United States government.

Robert Goddard, the son of a bookkeeper and machine shop operator, spent his childhood in Worcester, Massachusetts, during the period of rapid industrialization that followed the American Civil War. His interest in the possibility of space travel was apparently kindled in 1898, when he read the serialized version of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds that appeared in the Boston Post. He received his college education at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and...