Ronald Richter, Genius or Nut?

Roederer replies: Friedwardt Winterberg gives Ronald Richter too much scientific credit. He seems unfamiliar with the literature that is available—unfortunately only in Spanish—particularly Mario Mariscotti’s meticulously documented book, ¹ and reports available on the Internet; for example, see ref. for a succinct answer to “what went wrong.”

Richter wanted to do his thesis at Prague University on “Earth rays” but was persuaded to choose another subject. His only research jobs before going to Argentina were a six-month stint working on explosives and a few postwar commercial contracts. Richter never published a scientific article or technical report because there just was nothing to publish. And according to José Balseiro, founder of the Bariloche research center, Richter showed “a surprising lack of knowledge of the physics relevant to his own project” (ref. 2, p. 9).

True, Richter was interested in certain types of electric discharges and what he called “self-confining balls of plasma excited with sound waves” (ref. 1, p. 146), which was indeed the subject of an early stage of his “experiments” on Isla Huemul. As for Karl Wirtz, I stated that it was not scientists, but doubters among Juan Perón’s entourage, who sought Wirtz’s opinion (Heisenberg was contacted first, but he deferred the task to Wirtz.)

It is difficult to determine whether Richter was a clever impostor or a scientific nut. A 1956 quote from Edward Teller (ref. 1, p. 278) says it all: “Reading one line [of Richter’s ideas] one has to think that he’s a genius. Reading the next line one realizes that he’s crazy.”