Herman Potočnik

A Yugoslav Slovene rocket engineer and pioneer of astronautics. He is chiefly remembered for his work addressing the long-term human habitation of space.

Early Life

Potočnik was born in the port of Pula, Istria, then part of the Austria-Hungarian monarchy (now in Croatia). His family was of Slovene ethnicity and originated from Lower Styria in Former Yugoslavia (now Slovenia). Both of Potočnik's parents were Slovene. His father Jožef was born in 1841 in Zgornji Razbor and at the time of Herman's birth he served as a doctor and high navy officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy harbour of Pula. His mother Minka was born February 7, 1854; she was a descendant of Czech immigrants, manufacturers of crucibles for glass-making, and a daughter of a well known wine merchant and local councillor Jožef Kokošinek from Maribor (born in Vitanje). In 1866, Herman's father Jožef participated in the second Battle of Vis, where the Austrian Navy under command of von Tegetthoff defeated the Royal Italian Navy. Jožef was later a general in the Austro-Hungarian Army.

Education and military service

In Maribor, Potočnik attended primary school. Afterward he went to the military secondary schools in Fischau and Hranice in Moravia. His uncle Heinrich was a major-general in the army, and probably enabled his study at Austrian military schools. From 1910 to 1913 he studied at the Imperial and Royal Technical Military Academy in Mödling in Lower Austria (Niederösterreich) near Vienna and graduated as an engineers second lieutenant. His specialization was building of railways and bridges.

Death

Potočnik died of pneumonia at the age of 36 in great poverty in Vienna, Austria, and was buried there. An obituary notice about his death was printed in one Maribor daily newspaper, mentioning his ranks (engineers and captain), his illness, but nothing about his work regarding space.

Legacy

Streets in Graz and Ljubljana and Pula now bear his name.
A proposal was made in the late 1990s to name the International Space Station after him, but was not taken up.
Asteroid 19612 Noordung, found in 1999 at Črni Vrh Observatory, is named after him.
There is activity going on to put up a statue of Herman Potočnik in his birthplace of Pula.
Asteroid 19612 Noordung, found in 1999 at Črni Vrh Observatory, is named after him.

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Since the beginning of time, mankind has considered it as an expression of its Earthly weakness and inadequacy to be bound to the Earth, to be unable to free itself from the mysterious shackles of gravity.Herman Potočnik