Born the September 17 of 1857 in the village of Izhevskoye, fifth of 18 brothers, Tsiolkovsky was the son of a Polish immigrant. At 10 he was deafened because of scarlet and 14 was forced to leave the school. He continued his education at home, and from 1873 to 1876 he lived in Moscow where he studied mathematics, chemistry, astronomy and mechanics.
Already at 17 he began to imagine the possibility of flying into space, and inspired by the novels of Jules Verne, he began to think about how to design a spacecraft. Not only did he propose to explore the Universe, but also to establish colonies. After finishing his studies, he taught in Kaluga, and began writing science fiction stories, introducing elements of science and technology. From science fiction he moved on to studies on the principles of action and reaction, and the propellant of rockets.
In 1894 he designed a monoplane and in 1897 he built the first wind tunnel in Russia. He wrote several books on space exploration, and was the first to use mathematics and physics to study and model the functioning of space rockets.
He theorized many aspects of space flight and rocket propulsion. He is considered the father of human spaceflight and the first man to conceive the space elevator. His most famous work was "The exploration of outer space by means of jet engines", which he published in 1903 and which is considered the first academic treatise on rocketry. His work laid the foundation for the future Soviet space program and later influenced rocket scientists across Europe, and was also studied by Americans in the 1950s and 1960s as they attempted to understand the Soviet Union's early successes in space flight.
In 1903, he published Tsiolkovsky's formula, which is still the basis of today's spacecraft engineering. His theory of multistage rockets was published in 1929. Tsiolkovsky is also remembered for his ideas on the industrialization of space and the exploitation of its resources.
Since his death on 19 September 1935, he has been celebrated and honored. A crater of the Moon bears his name, and in 1989 he joined the International Aerospace Hall of Fame. The museum of the history of cosmonautics is named after him in Kaluga.