1. Willy Otto Oskar Ley was a German and American science writer and proponent of space exploration and cryptozoology.
19 Facts About Willy Ley
1. 2.
Willy Ley grew up in his native Berlin during the First World War under the supervision of two aunts.
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Willy Ley was so convinced by Oberth's book that he sat down at the age of 19 to write a popularization of its contents.
4.
Willy Ley began corresponding with every known rocket enthusiast in Europe, including Oberth himself.
5.
Willy Ley continued to write articles for the domestic and foreign press while he stayed in touch with close friends.
6.
Yet for the most part, Willy Ley turned back to his original scientific interests, while writing a biography of Conrad Gessner.
7.
Willy Ley was horrified by National Socialism, its ideology and its style of violent politics.
8.
In January 1935, Willy Ley used company stationery to write a letter that authorized his vacation in London.
9.
Willy Ley was an avid reader of science fiction, and began publishing scientific articles in American science fiction magazines, beginning with "The Dawn of the Conquest of Space" in the March 1937 issue of Astounding Stories.
10.
Willy Ley was a member of science fiction fandom as well, attending science fiction conventions, and was eventually a Guest of Honor at Philcon II, the 1953 World Science Fiction Convention.
11.
Willy Ley had a regular science column called "For Your Information" in Galaxy Science Fiction from March 1952 until his death.
12.
Willy Ley participated in "Man in Space", a 1955 episode of Disneyland which explained spaceflight to a large television audience.
13.
Fellow Galaxy columnist Floyd C Gale wrote that Ley "has become as familiar to TV audiences as Howdy Doody".
14.
Willy Ley consulted for the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet series of children's science fiction books and TV series, as well as the 1959 feature film entitled The Space Explorers.
15.
In 1954, Willy Ley wrote Engineers' Dreams in which he discussed 'Seven Future Wonders of the World'.
16.
Willy Ley was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers.
17.
In 2025, Willy Ley's ashes were found in a labeled crematorium tin in the basement of an apartment building on West 67th Street on the Manhattan's Upper West Side.
18.
Willy Ley was best known for his books on rocketry and related topics, but he wrote a number of books about cryptozoology, a pseudoscience.
19.
Willy Ley collected much source material on anomalous animals for his writings.