Robert Goddard

Robert Goddard was a physicist who turned the theory of rocket flight into working machines. His 1919 Smithsonian paper A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes laid out the mathematics and drew public ridicule for suggesting a rocket could reach the Moon. In 1926 he launched the first liquid-fueled rocket from a farm in Massachusetts, a short flight that proved the principle behind all modern rockets. Working largely alone and in secrecy, he pioneered guidance vanes, gyroscopic control, and pumped fuel systems, holding more than two hundred patents. His contribution was fully recognized only after his death, as the space age he had foreseen began.