Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was born on 17 September 1857 and spent most of his life in a log house on the outskirts of Kaluga, about 150 km southwest of Moscow. A recluse by nature, his unusual habits made him appear eccentric to his fellow townsfolk, but the work he produced there laid the theoretical foundation for modern rocketry and astronautics. Along with Hermann Oberth and Robert H. Goddard, he pioneered the science of space flight when it existed only on paper. His works later inspired Wernher von Braun and leading Soviet rocket engineers Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko, wh…