Sergei Korolev

Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer who led the development of the Soviet space program during the early years of the Space Race.

Arrested in 1938 during the Great Purge on charges later shown to be false, he spent nearly six years in prison and labour camps - including several months in Kolyma - and lost most of his teeth to scurvy. Released in 1945, he directed the R-7 rocket, the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile, which carried Sputnik (1957) and Gagarin (1961). During his lifetime he was publicly identified only as 'glavny konstruktor' (chief designer) - partly to protect him from assassination during the Cold War - and even some cosmonauts who worked with him did not know his name. He died on 14 Jan 1966, nine days after surgery (the official story was a cancerous tumour; his rival Glushko said a poorly performed operation); his obituary ran in Pravda on 16 Jan. His ashes rest in the Kremlin Wall.

Built on the German V-2 work and the GIRD rocket group he joined in the 1930s. Enabled Sputnik, Vostok and the Luna program. The counterpart to Wernher von Braun on the other side of the Iron Curtain - 'comparable as the leading architects of the space age'.