Philipp Wagner was born in Vienna in 1933. His Jewish father joined the Austrian Resistance and died in Buchenwald in 1942. After attending school for only eight years, he was admitted to a watchmaker's school, where he became fascinated by the concept of time. As a young man of twenty, he emigrated to South Africa in 1953 to represent the Buren Watch Company in East London. Life's journey is never simple, and neither was his. A chance encounter paved the way for a career in Armscor, where his passion for perfection led to the establishment of a microengineering company bearing his name. It is here that he started researching the effect of gravity on time, which enabled him to detect gravitational disturbances. He is, quite possibly, the first man to prove the existence of gravitational waves.