Von Braun, Wernher

von Braun, Wernher (vôn broun), 1912–77, German-American rocket expert, b. Germany, grad. Berlin Technological Institute (B.S., 1932), Ph.D. Univ. of Berlin, 1934. After 1930, von Braun assisted Hermann Oberth in early experiments in building and firing small liquid fuel rockets. From 1937 to 1945, von Braun was technical director of the German rocket research center at Peenemünde and was research professor there from 1943. At Peenemünde he was responsible for the successful development of the German V-2 liquid fuel rocket and also for other rocket weapons. At the close of World War II, von Braun was brought to the United States, and from 1945 to 1950 he was technical adviser at the White Sands Proving Grounds and also project director at Fort Bliss, Tex. He went to Huntsville, Ala., in 1950, first as chief of the guided missile development division, Redstone Arsenal (1950–56), and then as director of the development operations division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (now the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center), where he developed rockets for the manned lunar program. In 1970 he became deputy associate administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Von Braun was an ardent advocate of rocket development and space flight, acting as America's best-known spokesman for space exploration. He became a U.S. citizen in 1955. His writings include Across the Space Frontier (1952), The Exploration of Mars (with Willy Ley, 1956), and First Men to the Moon (1960).

Bibliography

See biography by H. M. David (1967).

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Von Braun, Wernher (1912–77) engineer, rocket expert; born in Wirsitz, Germany. Developer of the V-2 flying bomb that was deployed against Britain (1944), he was one of the most important of the German weapons specialists to work on rocketry and jet propulsion in America after the war. Hitler personally released him when he was imprisoned on espionage charges after refusing to cooperate with Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler's attempted takeover of the V-2 project. Von Braun never approved of the military use of the rocket and surrendered willingly to American troops (1945). Signing a one-year contract with the U.S. Army, he was flown to America where he eventually became technical director of the U.S. Army Ordnance Guided Missile Project in Alabama (1950). He was chiefly responsible for the manufacture and launching of the first American artificial earth satellite, Explorer I (1958). As director of the Marshall Space Flight Center (1960–70), he developed the Saturn rocket for the Apollo 8 moon landing (1969). Good-looking and outgoing, he was occasionally the butt of both humorous and serious attacks aimed at the very notion of former German scientists working for the U.S. space program.