Robert Hutchings Goddard combined a vivid imagination with rare scientific talent and technical skill. He was a top-notch physicist and a first-class engineer. On the outside, he was proper and conservative, but he harbored astonishing ideas, such as sending flash-powder rockets to the Moon. He also fantasized about communication with extraterrestrial beings, manned journeys to Mars, and ion propulsion (an advanced method of fueling rockets on which he had a patent).
Goddard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1882 and spent most of his life there. He earned his Ph.D. at Clark University, where he became a professor in the physics department. Goddard was ill for much of his youth, and he became convinced that he had to accomplish something meaningful and extraordinary in his life. From his boyhood he was fascinated with the possibilities of technology. He especially found inspiration from reading a serialized version of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds during one of his recuperations. A year later, at the age of seventeen, he decided that what he half-jokingly called "high altitude research" was his life's calling.
Sitting in a cherry tree in his grandmother's orchard, the young Goddard envisioned a device powered by centrifugal force that was capable of carrying him from Earth to Mars. He would later consider this vision a turning point, forever marking that day in the orchard in October 1899 as his "Anniversary Day." He went on to devote himself and all of his spare time to rocketry, despite minimal resources and little external support.
