Rodolphe's details have proved extremely elusive, but the very nice people at Renault's Customer Services Dept have been most helpful and directed me to a sort of French dictionary of biographies.
Briefly, he was born in Paris in 1887 and studied engineering in Switzerland before joining Renault in November 1913. He was called up in August 14 but recalled to work for Renault in the December - as it turned out, a highly fortuitous decision. Most interestingly, the book describes him as "the mother of the Tank", Louis Renault being the "father". That will raise a few eyebrows among General Estienne's acolytes, I suspect.
Rodolphe retired in 1958 and, as I had already discovered, continued writing about automobile design for some years, well into the 1960s.
He died in August 1985, aged 97!
-- Edited by James H on Wednesday 24th of March 2010 03:03:57 PM
__________________
"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
