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Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945)

Robert Goddard began his experiments in rocketry while studying for his doctorate at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Goddard's doctoral dissertation "On the Conduction of Electricity at Contacts of Dissimilar Solids", 1911, was not related to rocketry, but was rather in the "main stream" physics. Goddard experimentally studied anisotropic changes in the electrical resistance of loosely powdered substances, particularly barium sulphide. The emerging radio technology relied on such materials for receiving the signals. Today we would call this area of research experimental solid-state physics.

His Ph.D. degree attained, Goddard actively embarked on research in rocketry, when he joined the faculty of Clark University in 1914. His basic research and development of new technology would achieve many rocket "firsts" and bring him 214 patents. He would often be called the Father of Modern Rocketry. Goddard concentrated first on the study of solid-propellant gunpowder rockets and improving their efficiency. The term "efficiency," introduced by him, meant "the ratio of the kinetic energy of the expelled gases to the heat energy of the powder."

Robert Goddard presented the results of his early rocket work in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 1919, a publication of the respectable Smithsonian Institution. This famous treatise of Goddard, entitled "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes," outlined his ideas on rocketry and included detailed calculations of rocket dynamics and results of his various tests.

In 1935 the first liquid-propellant rocket accelerated to a speed faster than the speed of sound. Two years later, on 26 March 1937, the Goddard's rocket reached an altitude 8000 — 9000 ft (2400 — 2700 m). All of this work was performed by Robert Goddard practically alone, with a few assistants. History would demonstrate, in a few years only, that the time of such individual effort has gone. The development of a modern powerful rocket would require a concerted effort of hundreds and thousands of scientists and engineers backed by the vast resources; the task possible only with the support of a mighty state.

Robert H. Goddard died on 10 August 1945, in Baltimore a few days after World War II ended. The recognition of Goddard's work came only long after his death. In 1959 the U.S. Congress honored Robert H. Goddard, and NASA named after him one of its leading field centers, Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland, on May l.

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