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Richard K. Guy refers to him as "F. Göbel" in his Unsolved Problems of Number Theory but that's as close as I can get.

For reference:

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoebelsSequence.html

Prime Mover
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The first thing I tried was searching for "Gobel" at the Mathematics Genealogy Project, which I figured wouldn't be successful because for something like this it's likely the person doesn't have a math Ph.D. (or any Ph.D.), and it's also something I would assume you tried. However, there was a single "F. Göbel" listed, Frits Göbel, and his thesis title also somewhat suggests that this might be the correct person. (A title such as "Enriched Categories and Quasi-uniform Spaces" would, for example, have had me thinking otherwise.)

Then I tried the google search "Göbel's sequence" + "Fritz" and got exactly one hit, this 25 September 1986 letter from Richard K. Guy to Neil J. A. Sloan. The sequence $1,$ $2,$ $3,$ $5,$ $10,$ $28,$ $154,$ $3520,\, \ldots$ at the bottom of the first page is identified with the name Fritz Göbel. The google search "Fritz Göbel" + "sequence" appears to confirm that this is the Göbel you want. I don't know whether he has a middle name or his birth year, but I believe he is still alive.

Dave L Renfro
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  • Nice one! Didn't think of MGP. Looked in lots of other places. I see it appears to be "Frits" rather than "Fritz", which I will be careful to document. – Prime Mover Nov 05 '20 at 16:02
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    Oops, the Fritz spelling is a typo I made without thinking! It looks like this was a lucky accident on my part, since the Guy/Sloan letter uses "Fritz". – Dave L Renfro Nov 05 '20 at 16:04
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    Googling "Göbel's sequence" + "Frits" is actually quite fruitful. For a start, it's thrown up a work "Queueing Models Involving Buffers" which goes some way to finding out what he was all about. – Prime Mover Nov 05 '20 at 16:11
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    I found a paper from 2003 dedicated to Frits Göbel on the occasion of his 70th birthday, so his year of birth is likely 1933. This also jibes with the fact that he retired from the University of Twente in 1998, presumably at the age of 65. – njuffa Nov 06 '20 at 01:26