Portal:Spaceflight/Selected biography/June 2009

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskii (September 17 1857–September 19, 1935) was an Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory, considered by many to be the father of theoretical astronautics. He was born on September 17, 1857, in the village of Izhevskoe in the Ryazan Province, south of Moscow. Konstantin, or Kostya for short, was fifth out of 18 children in the family. The nearly complete loss of hearing in the childhood left bright and active Konstantin Tsiolkovsky impaired for the rest of his life. At the same time, biographers agree, the disability made him turn to books and stimulated his lifelong drive for learning. In February 1892, after 12 years of working as teacher in the small town of Borovsk, Tsiolkovsky was promoted to a new position, in the provincial capital of Kaluga. Tsiolkovsky would remain in Kaluga until his death in 1935, and it was there that he created the monumental body of work that secured his place as a prophet of the Space Age. Despite the fact that Tsiolkovsky's theories remained largely unknown in the West for decades, his influence on the first generation of Russian space engineers is unquestionable. (more...)