Willy Ley

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Willy Ley (born October 2, 1906 in Berlin , † June 24, 1969 in New York ) was a science journalist, rocket designer and co-founder of the world's first rocket airfield in Berlin . He has also published under the pseudonym Robert Wiley .

Willy Ley, in the middle Wernher von Braun and on the left Heinz Haber

Live and act

Willy Ley studied zoology , palaeontology , astronomy and physics in Berlin and Königsberg from 1923 to 1927 . He then worked as a freelance writer and journalist in Berlin. In 1925 he turned to space travel . Although not a founding member, Willy Ley worked there from August 1927 as member number 20 shortly after the establishment of the Association for Space Travel and became second chairman in November 1930. Many pioneers of rocket technology and space travel, such as Wernher von Braun , Hermann Oberth , Rudolf Nebel and others , gathered in this association, which was founded on the initiative of Max Valier . In 1929 Ley acted alongside Hermann Oberth and Rudolf Nebel as a technical advisor for Fritz Lang's science fiction film Woman in the Moon . In the same year he published the technical future novel The Starfield Company in a Leipzig magazine , as well as a treatise on Conrad Gessner . As early as 1930 he made contact with the science fiction scene through friends in the USA and reported, among other things. a. in Wonder Stories about the activities of German rocket builders, at the same time he wrote about science fiction in the USA in German newspapers.

When the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda determined in 1934 that no reports on "rocket technology, rocket cars or planes, even in the form of novels" could be published, Ley was deprived of his basis for work. In 1935 he emigrated to the USA via Great Britain and was a. a. scientific editor of a daily newspaper, then engineer at the Washington Institute of Technology . In the early 1950s, Ley worked as a technical consultant for the Tom Corbett television series , Space Cadet . From 1958 he worked for NASA and in 1959 he received an honorary doctorate from Rutherford University, NJ.

Until his death in 1969, Ley was one of the most widely printed science journalists in science fiction magazines. His articles on scientific subjects such as space travel, Mars , the ice age , meteorites and chemistry have appeared in many important magazines. Willy Ley offered readers the opportunity to compare the scientific content of the stories with the actual knowledge of the time, but also made speculations within reasonable limits, which in turn sparked the imagination of other authors. For his services to popularizing space travel, he received the Hugo Award twice : in 1953 as a columnist and in 1956 for his "Fact Article or Article Series".

Ley publishes together with other authors, u. a. with Wernher von Braun and Chesley Bonestell , and together with his wife Olga books on exotic zoology. In 1955 he appeared together with von Braun in the Walt Disney TV special Man in Space about space travel, in which he also acted as a technical advisor. Willy Ley was also a technical advisor to the American science fiction television series Tom Corbett, Space Cadet .

The Ley impact crater on the back of the moon was named after Willy Ley in 1970 .

Selected publications

  • Willy Ley (Ed.): The possibility of space travel , Hachmeister & Thal, Leipzig 1928 (with contributions by Hermann Oberth, Franz von Hoefft , Walter Hohmann and others)
  • Willy Ley: Konrad Gesner. Life and work . Munich 1929. Sign .: SA 63 (15/16) (Munich contributions to the history and literature of the natural sciences and medicine; 15/16)
  • Willy Ley: Race to the planets, in: Mechanix Illustrated, July 1947, English
  • Willy Ley: Advance into space - rocket and space travel, 1949, (German edition of 'Rockets and Space Travel', Universum Verlags GmbH Vienna; 392 pages; with drawings and photos).
  • Willy Ley: Die Himmelskunde , Econ 1965; 614 pages; some S / W Ill
  • W. Ley, W. v. Braun: Exploring Mars ; S. Fischer Verlag 1957; 140 p. With drawings and color images

literature

Single references

  1. ↑ List of founding members of the association, cf. Journal of the Verein für Raumschiffahrt eV, Breslau, Die Rakete , issue of July 15, 1927, p. 83f, there both the founding members and the elected board are listed
  2. ↑ Ley. In: Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. International Astronomical Union, accessed August 6, 2012 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ley, Willy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Willey, Robert (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German rocket designer, publicist and co-founder of the world's first rocket airfield in Berlin
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 24, 1969
Place of death New York City