born Oct. 5, 1882, Worcester, Mass., U.S.
died Aug. 10, 1945, Baltimore, Md.
U.S. inventor, regarded as the father of modern rocketry.
He received his doctorate (1911) from Clark University, where he taught for much of his career. In laboratory work there, he proved that thrust and consequent propulsion can take place in a vacuum and was the first to develop a rocket engine using liquid propellants (static tested in 1925). In 1926 Goddard successfully launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket (gasoline and liquid oxygen) from a farm in Massachusetts. In 1935, having relocated his testing site to New Mexico, he was the first to send a liquid-fueled rocket faster than the speed of sound. He patented the first practical automatic steering apparatus for rockets, developed staged rocket s designed to gain great altitudes, and developed the first rocket-fuel pumps, self-cooling rocket engines, and other components of a propulsion system designed for space exploration. Much of his work anticipated that of Wernher von Braun in Germany but was ignored by the U.S. government until after his death at the end of World War II.