Helga Ernestine Rafelski, (née Betz) (3 September 1949 – 5 November 2000) was a German particle physicist. She got her professional degree from Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, her master's degree from University of Illinois at Chicago in 1977 and her PhD from University of Cape Town in 1988 under the advisement of Raoul D. Viollier. She studied muon-catalysed fusion and relativistic heavy-ion collisions.