Dr Wernher von Braun (1912-77), German-American rocket pioneer. Von Braun is shown here in a coloured US army black-and-white photograph taken the day he became an American citizen in 1955. The son of a German minister and a baron, he was educated at Zurich and Berlin Institutes of Technology. He started work on rocket design in 1932, becoming technical head of the German Peenemunde research centre in 1938 where he was responsible for the development of the V-2 rocket. At the end of the war, von Braun surrendered to the American army. He became a leading figure in the American space programme, designing the first US satellite launcher (Jupiter) in 1958.