Josef Mattauch

Josef Mattauch (21 November 1895 – 10 August 1976) was a German physicist known for his work in the investigation of the isotopic abundances by mass spectrometry. He developed the Mattauch isobar rule in 1934.

One of Herzog's most important contributions to mass spectrometry was the design of a sector mass spectrometer. The Mattauch–Herzog geometry consists of a ${\displaystyle \pi /4{\sqrt {2}}}$ radian electric sector, a drift length which is followed by a right angle (${\displaystyle \pi /2}$) magnetic sector of opposite curvature direction. The entry of the ions sorted primarily by charge into the magnetic field produces an energy focussing effect and much higher transmission than a standard energy filter. The advantage of this geometry is that the ions of different masses are all focused onto the same flat plane, which allows the use of a photographic plate or other flat detector array.

In 1941 he succeeded Lise Meitner as head of the physics department at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry and later became the director of the newly formed Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. He retired in 1965.

Mattauch was one of the Göttinger Achtzehn (Göttingen eighteen), a group of eighteen leading nuclear researchers of the Federal Republic of Germany who in 1957 wrote a manifesto (Göttinger Manifest, Göttinger Erklärung) opposing chancellor Konrad Adenauer and defense secretary Franz-Josef Strauß's move to arm the West German army with tactical nuclear weapons.

• Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
• Wilhelm Exner Medal, 1957