Willy Ley
A writer for the Science Program.
Profile From the Science Service
Willy Ley was born and grew up in Berlin, Germany. In 1927, when he was twenty-one, he became one of the founding members of the Society for Space Travel and took part in the first experimental work with liquid-fuel rockets in Europe. He was vice-president of that society until it dissolved in 1933. He had intended to become a paleontologist, but was also interested in the histories of various sciences; after he adopted the new science of space research, he wrote the first history of rockets and rocket propulsion.
Ley left Germany for England in January 1935. Later that year, he moved to the United States, where he became a citizen in March 1944. He has written about a dozen books, lectured and translated scientific papers. He has been science editor of a New York newspaper, research engineer at the Washington Institute of Technology, and information specialist in the Office of Technical Services, U.S. Department of Commerce. He is professor in the Science Department of Fairleigh Dickinson University and holds and honorary doctor's degree from Adelphi University.[1]
