Wernher von Braun

Nato/a 22 mar 1912 · Wirsitz, Germany [now Wyrzysk, Poland]

Werner Von Braun was a rocket pioneer and became the world's leading rocket scientist. Starting his career as a Nazi SS officer in the 1930s, and leading the team that developed what became the V-2 rocket, over 3,000 of which were eventually launched at England and Belgium during the later years of WWII. Following the war, Von Braun and 1600 other Nazi scientists were relocated to the United States via Operation Paperclip. Von Braun went to work for the US Army building early ballistic missiles, but was eventually absorbed into NACA, which became NASA, and became the first Director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, whose primary task was development of the Saturn V heavy-lift rocket system which was used in the NASA manned moon landings in the late 60s-early 70s.