To view items in this collection, use the Online Finding Aid
Dr. Michael Neufeld, a retired Senior Curator in the Space History Department at the National Air and Space Museum,published The Rocket and The Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era in 1995 and Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War in 2007. He is also the author of many articles based on his research. Neufeld's work covers both the development of rocketry in Germany in the Weimar and Nazi periods and the life and work of Wernher von Braun (1912-1977), including his period as the technical director of the German Army's V-2 rockets and his work after 1945 as a prominent engineering manager in the U.S. Army missile program and NASA's space programs, leading to the first U.S. satellite and the Apollo Moon landings. The Rocket and the Reich won the AIAA History Manuscript Award, 1995, and the Society for History of Technology's Dexter Prize, 1997. Von Braun won the Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award of the American Astronautical Society, 2008; Richard W. Leopold Prize of the Organization of American Historians, 2008; and the Secretary of the Smithsonian's Research Prize, 2008.