Willy Ley

German-American science writer, lecturer and rocket engineer, known as a proponent of cryptozoology, a pseudoscience. His book Rockets – the Future of Travel Beyond the Stratosphere (1944) describes the early rockets at VfR and more futuristic projects to reach the moon using a 3-stage rocket "as high as 1/3 of the Empire State Building" – a very good estimate of the height of the Saturn V rocket designed 20 years later.

After publishing Die Fahrt ins Weltall ("Travel in Outer Space") in 1926, Ley became one of the first members of Germany's amateur rocket group, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR – "Spaceflight Society") in 1927 and wrote extensively for its journal, Die Rakete ("The Rocket"). In 1935, carrying only his favourite books, a few changes of clothing and travel documentation, Ley fled from Nazi prosecution in Germany for Great Britain and ultimately the United States.

In 1936, he supervised operations of two rocket planes carrying mail at Greenwood Lake, New York. Ley was an avid reader of science fiction, and began publishing scientific articles in American science fiction magazines.

His works from the 1950s and '60s are regarded as classics of popular science and include The Conquest of Space 1949 (with Chesley Bonestell), The Conquest of the Moon (with Wernher von Braun and Fred Whipple, 1953), and Beyond the Solar System (1964).

Ley died at the age of 62 on 24 June 1969 in his home in Jackson Heights, Queens. Less than a month later men first landed on the Moon. The crater Ley on the far side of the Moon is named in his honour.