Ronald Richter

Ronald Richter (1909–1991) was an Austrian-born German, later became Argentine citizen, a scientist who became infamous in connection with the Argentine Huemul Project and the CNEA National Atomic Energy Commission. The project was intended to generate energy from nuclear fusion in the 1950s, during the presidency of Juan Perón. Richter's project would deliver—according to Perón's 1951 announcements—cheap energy in half-liter and one-liter containers.

Richter was born in Falkenau an der Eger (in Czech Falknov nad Ohří renamed Sokolov in 1948), Bohemia (now in Czech Republic) while it was part of the Austrian empire. Richter was of German origin, but it is not known whether he was born Austrian or German. He was naturalized as an Argentine citizen in the early 1950s; President of Argentina Juan Perón overrode Argentine law to enable this.

Richter attended the German University of Prague, graduating in 1935. Sources provide variant narratives about his studies as a doctoral candidate.

According to Gambini, Richter was awarded a doctorate in natural sciences in 1955. However, another source claims that he was not awarded a doctoral degree because he had misinterpreted his research results. He had concluded that he had discovered delta rays being emitted by the earth, but in fact he had been detecting X-rays scattered by the ground.

According to his recollection, Santos Mayo had personally heard Richard Gans say:

Richter proposed a thesis, at the German University of Prague, to detect "delta rays" emitted from Earth. Professor Heinrich Rausch von Traubenberg did not agree with the project. The "young genius" went to work somewhere else and graduated in a different field.

Kurt Sitte's recollections of Richter's research under Prof. Furth differed. He recalled:

...when I was Prof. Furth's assistant in the Department of Experimental Physics [of Prague University], [Richter] came to interest us in a fantastic project. He had read (not in a scientific journal, of course) about the discovery of a mysterious radiation, the "earth rays", that radiated from the interior of the Earth and caused a huge type of fabulous effects. These were what he wanted to research. He was very excited with the idea, and it was very difficult to convince him (if we really did) that the "evidence" cited was spurious. His thesis was not published.

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