Henri Daniel Rathgeber

Who was Henri Daniel Rathgeber?

Henri Daniel Rathgeber was an Australian physicist who studied cosmic rays but considered his most important contribution to be an economic theory that explain how entropy causes unemployment.

Rathgeber was born in Paris, Montmartre on 11 June 1908. His father, Daniel Rathgeber was German, working for Robert Bosch GmbH, and his mother Hortense Desmousseaux was French. Just before the outbreak of first world war, he moved to Bad Dürkheim with his French mother, while his father served in the German army. From 1919-1924 he lived in Geneva, Switzerland and went to school at the College. In 1934 he completed an undergraduate degree at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart and in 1938 completed his doctorate in physics. During this period the physics department was very active at the Technische Hochschule, with teachers such as Erwin Schrödinger, Erich Regener and Paul Peter Ewald.

Rathgeber played an important part in Erich Regener's balloon experiments, as he was the only student at that time who owned a car, and was therefore asked to collect the balloons and measuring apparatus, which could travel up to a distance of 200 km from Stuttgart.