[1] Rechenberg studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at the University of Munich and graduated in 1964.
He moved to the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, where he became Werner Heisenberg's doctoral student.
From 1970 to 1972 he worked at the University of Texas at Austin, collaborating with George Sudarshan on quantum field theory and with Jagdish Mehra on science history.
[1] His six-volume work with Jagdish Mehra on the history of quantum mechanics has been described as "an extraordinary amount of painstaking scholarship".
[5] From 1991 to 2006, he was also a board member of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft's Physics History Association.