American scientist (1882-1945). Born in
Worcester,
Massachusetts, he endured long periods of
illness throughout his
childhood and
adolescence and was often unable to attend
school. He
majored in
physics at the
Worcester Polytechnic Institute and received his
Ph.D. from
Clark University. Goddard became interested in
rocketry while on the
faculty at Clark and began a long series of
experiments in
rocket propulsion both with
solid fuels and with
liquid oxygen and
gasoline, leading to the first
flight of a liquid-fuel
rocket in 1926. In 1929, his
work came to the attention of
Charles Lindbergh, who persuaded the
Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics to
support his studies.
Goddard moved to
Roswell, New Mexico, where he worked for the rest of his life on
larger
rockets capable of reaching higher
altitudes -- one of his rockets broke the
sound barrier in 1935. He was unable to convince the
military that his rockets could have military
value, and spent
World War II working on
JATO units in
Annapolis. He died of
throat cancer in 1945, just a few days after the
Nagasaki atomic bomb was dropped.
A dedicated
fan of
science fiction, Goddard celebrated every October 19th as the
anniversary of the day in 1899 when he climbed a
cherry tree near his home and, inspired by
H. G. Wells' novel "
The War of the Worlds," had a
vision of traveling to
Mars in a
rocket...
Research from GURPS Who's Who 2, compiled by Phil Masters, "Robert Goddard" by William H. Stoddard, pp. 106-107.