Herman Potočnik

Due to his chronic illness, Herman Potočnik decided to remain a bachelor and lived with his brother, Adolf, in Vienna.

While living on the verge of poverty, his illness progressed quickly. He wrote his sole book literally on his death bed.

Herman Potočnik died of pneumonia on August 27, 1929, at the age of 36, in Vienna, Austria, and was buried there.

Herman Potočnik was born on December 22, 1892, in the Austria-Hungarian port of Pula located in southern Istria, to Jožef, a doctor and high navy officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy harbour of Pula, and his wife, Minka, a descendant of Czech immigrants.

His family belonged to Slovene ethnicity and originated from Lower Styria in Austria-Hungary. He had two brothers, Adolf and Gustav, and a sister, Frančiška.

In 1866, his father took part in the second Battle of Vis, and later served as a general in the Austro-Hungarian Army. In 1894, his father died and the family moved to Maribor.

He spent most of his childhood years in Maribor and supposedly in Vitanje, the birthplace of his mother. After receiving his primary education from local schools in Maribor, he attended the military secondary schools in Fischau and Hranice (Mährisch-Weißkirchen) in Moravia.

His uncle Heinrich served as a Major-General in the Army, and possibly facilitated Herman’s education at the Austrian military schools.

During the First World War, while stationed at Galicia, Serbia and Bosnia, Herman Potočnik worked as an expert for bridge and railway constructions.

In 1915, he was elevated to the rank of First Lieutenant and was commissioned to the southwestern front of the Soča battlefield.

In 1919, after contracting incurable tuberculosis of lungs during the war, he retired from Austrian military with the rank of Captain.

Then, he attended the University of Technology in Vienna and completed studies in machinery and electric technology, graduating as an engineer in 1925. After obtaining PhD in engineering, he focused on rocket science and completely immersed himself in the research of space technology.

In 1929, Herman Potočnik published a book titled ‘The Problem of Space Travel’ under the pseudonym Noordung. The book was way ahead of its time and presented numerous solutions that would enable humans to live in outer space. It considered space travel not as mere day-dreaming but as a very real technological possibility.

His 1929 book, Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums - der Raketen-Motor (The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor), made a significant contribution to rocket technology. The book devised a plan for the establishment of a permanent human presence in the space. It conceived a detailed design for a space station and described how the special conditions of space could be useful for scientific experiments. He was the first man to recognize the significance of the geostationary orbit, on which the station would orbit the Earth, and also made first detailed calculations of this orbit.