Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857 to 1935) was a Russian rocket scientist who pioneered astronautics. Together with Hermann Oberth and Robert H. Goddard he is counted among the pioneers of space flight and as a founding father of modern rocketry and astronautics. His works later inspired Wernher von Braun and leading Soviet rocket engineers Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko, who contributed to the success of the Soviet space program. He spent most of his life in a log house on the outskirts of Kaluga, about 150 km southwest of Moscow, and was a recluse by nature whose unusual habits made him seem eccentric to his neighbours. For transport he matters as an early theorist of leaving the atmosphere.