It was named after Robert H. Goddard, American engineer, professor, physicist and inventor who is credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket.

[9] In the 1960s, GISS was a frequent center for high-level scientific workshops, including the "History of the Earth's Crust Symposium" in November 1966 which has been described as the meeting that gave birth to the idea of plate tectonics.

[13] GISS personnel were involved as instrument and science team scientists in multiple historic NASA solar system missions, Mariner 5 to Venus, Pioneer 10 and 11 to Jupiter and Saturn, the Voyager program, Pioneer Venus, Galileo to Jupiter, the unsuccessful Mars Observer and Climate Orbiter, and Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn.

Notably, Michael Mishchenko of GISS was project scientist for the Glory mission, which failed to reach orbit after launch in 2011.

[14] More recently, Brian Cairns of GISS is one of the deputy project scientists of the PACE mission, which launched in February 2024 and has two polarimeters on board.

[citation needed] Changes in carbon dioxide associated with continental drift, and the decrease in volcanism as India arrived at the Asian continent, allowed temperatures to drop & Antarctic ice-sheets to form.

[18] In November 2004, climatologists Drew Shindell and Gavin Schmidt were named amongst Scientific American magazine's Top 50 Scientist award.