Hermann Oberth

Hermann Julius Oberth was an AustroHungarianborn German physicist and engineer. He is considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics.

Oberth was born to a Transylvanian Saxon family in Hermannstadt , AustriaHungary, today Sibiu in Romania. At the age ofyears, Oberth became fascinated with the field in which he was to make his mark through reading the writings of Jules Verne, especially From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, rereading them to the point of memorization. Influenced by Vernes books and ideas, Oberth constructed his first model rocket as a school student at the age of 14. In his youthful experiments, he arrived independently at the concept of the multistage rocket, but he lacked then the resources to pursue his idea on any but a pencilandpaper level.

Source: Wikipedia