Alphons Silbermann (1909 - 2000) was a German Jewish sociologist, musicologist, entrepreneur and publicist.
He studied musicology, sociology and law at the Universities of Cologne, Freiburg i. Br. and Grenoble. After he gained his doctorate, the Nazis' rise led Silbermann to emigrate to the Netherlands and 1938 from Amsterdam via Paris, where he worked as a waiter, to Sydney. In Australia he started as a dishwasher but went soon from rags to riches with his own fast food restaurant Silver's Food Bars. He initiated the first fastfood chain of Australia, becoming a successful entrepreneur.
His academic career started in 1944 in Sydney at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music. As an empirical culture-sociologist, he went back to Europe (especially Paris) in 1951. Seven years later, René König brought him back to Cologne, where he taught at the University. In 1964 he was called to the Lausanne as a successor of Vilfredo Pareto and later at the University of Bordeaux.