What were the illnesses that inflicted Robert Goddard?
The nature of the illnesses that hounded Robert Goddard as a child cannot be determined. In fact, there is some unsubstantiated speculation that his prolonged childhood absences from school were as much a result of an overprotective family as they were from sickness. After earning his PhD at Clark University, but before he joined the faculty there, Goddard had a research fellowship at Princeton University for the 1912-1913 school year. During March, he came down with tuberculosis. Although the doctor thought that the illness would kill him, Goddard became better after battling it for many months. However, the disease would plague him to a greater or lesser extent for the rest of his life. After fighting throat cancer for several months, Robert Goddard died on August 10, 1945.
