Georg von Tiesenhausen

Early years Tiesenhausen was born in Riga, Latvia, in the Russian Empire to a Baltic German noble family Tiesenhausen from his father's side, while his mother was of Scottish ancestry. He studied engineering in Hamburg, but was conscripted to the Luftwaffe in 1939 and sent to the Eastern Front. He was allowed to continue his studies and in 1943 and graduated from University of Hamburg. After his graduation he was sent to the Peenemünde Army Research Center.

Career Tiesenhausen worked with Wernher von Braun developing V-2 rockets in Germany during World War II. He came to America in 1953 as part of Operation Paperclip, where he again worked with von Braun on guided missiles such as the Redstone, this time for the United States Army at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. He was later transferred to NASA, where he worked on various spaceflight programs, including the Apollo program, which landed men on the Moon.

He continued to work for NASA well into the Shuttle era. Later he worked on space tether missions.

Awards In 2007, he became one of the original inductees into the Space Camp Hall of Fame. On February 3, 2011, he was presented with the U.S. Space & Rocket Center's Lifetime Achievement Award for Education by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong. "Dr. von T. is one of those rare individuals who has a natural ability to inform and inspire, to educate and motivate, and, most remarkably, to endure," Armstrong said. Neil Armstrong gave a brief but impressive summary of Georg von Tiesenhausen achievements: "He is and has been a person who imagines what can be, and he has the skills to convert that image into reality."