Richard Herzog (physicist)

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Richard Franz Karl Herzog (born March 13, 1911 in Vienna ; † September 26, 1999 ) was an Austrian-American physicist .

Live and act

Herzog was a student and assistant to Felix Ehrenhaft at the University of Vienna . He was also a student of Josef Mattauch , who commissioned him to investigate ion optics in mass spectrometers . In 1934 they presented the design for an improved double-focusing mass spectrometer (Mattauch-Herzog system or geometry). It was built in 1936 by Mattauch and Herzog, and devices based on the model in the 1930s were also built in the USA. It allowed atomic weights to be determined with a precision that was previously unknown. During the Second World War he continued mass spectroscopic investigations with Mattauch in Vienna. Herzog was an assistant at the 1st Physics Institute in Vienna and worked closely with Georg Stetter (the director of the 2nd Physics Institute), especially on the camouflaging project, which was classified as particularly important for the war effort Submarines against radar bearings from aircraft ( black submarine , Erwin Fues and others were also involved ). Stetter himself was very active in the uranium project and had received extensive funding for it (the laboratories in Vienna were among the best equipped in this area in the German Reich). Herzog built a mass spectrograph with Mattauch student Alfred Bönisch, among other things for isotope separation, but the work was not finished and the apparatus was dismantled in the face of the bombing and stored in the basement of the 1st Physics Institute. In the Farm Hall Protocols Kurt Diebner said that Wilhelm Walcher and Herzog had plans to build mass spectrometers to separate uranium isotopes, but neither would have been successful. In 1946, Herzog and a few others such as Willibald Jentschke were temporarily dismissed in Vienna because of party membership in the NSDAP. Josef Schintlmeister , who had also been dismissed, tried to recruit Herzog and Jentschke for the Soviet nuclear weapons project, but they refused. Soon after, however, he was employed again at the University of Vienna and from 1950 professor.

In 1953 he emigrated to the USA and became a US citizen in 1958. First he was at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center in Bedford (Massachusetts) and then at the Geophysics Corporation of America (GCA) in Bedford, first as manager of the ion physics department and then until 1973 as chief scientist for space physics (Space Science Operations). After that he was professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg until his retirement in 1978 .

In 1949 he laid the first foundations for secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) with his doctoral student Franz Viehböck (dissertation 1948 ). Herzog had developed and patented the ion source for this as early as 1942. He also improved the SIMS in the USA with an important publication in 1963 with Helmut Liebl , who received his doctorate in Munich in 1956 and joined Herzog at the GCA in 1959 (but had already worked with him before). They later got involved in the development of a SIMS as Raimond Castaing and Georges Slodzian , but had the advantage of great experience and funding from NASA, which wanted a compact ion micro-sample for their lunar landing mission. In 1963 they presented their IMS101 (three years after Castaing and Slodzian). In contrast to the French device (which was further developed by the Cameca company), they used a double-focusing spectrometer (i.e. an electrostatic field in addition to the magnet) and a duoplasmatron by Manfred von Ardenne (1956) as the ion source . Later there was a patent dispute with Cameca.

A prize from the German Society for Mass Spectrometry is named after him and Mattauch. In 1985 he was Honorary Chairman of the 5th SIMS Conference. Herzog was a member of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. In 1983 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna.

Fonts (selection)

  • Ion and electron optical cylinder lenses and prisms, Part I, Z. f. Physik, Vol. 89, 1934, pp. 447-473
  • with Viehböck: Ion source for mass spectrometry, Phys. Rev., Vol. 76, 1949, pp. 855L-856L
  • with HJ Liebl: Sputtering ion source for solids, J. Appl. Physics, Vol. 34, 1963, pp. 2893-2896

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life and career dates see Keith A. Nier, Richard Franz Karl Herzog , in Keith A. Nier, Alfred L. Yergey, P. Jane Gale, The Encyclopedia of Mass Spectrometry: Volume 9: Historical Perspectives, Part B: Notable People in Mass Spectrometry, Elsevier, 2015, p. 107
  2. ↑ Mattauch, Herzog, On a New Mass Spectrograph, Z. f. Physik, Vol. 89, 1934, pp. 786-795
  3. ↑ Mattauch was appointed head of the radiophysical department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin in 1941, Silke Fengler: Kerne, co-operation and competition. Nuclear research in Austria in an international context (1900–1950), Böhlau 2015, p. 292
  4. ↑ Felgner, 2015, loc. cit., p. 266
  5. ^ Farm Hall Report, August 6, 1945, Jeremy Bernstein, Hitler's Uranium Club, Springer 2001, p. 137 ( Farm Hall Protocols )
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Reiter: From Erdberg to Boltzmanngasse - 100 Years of Physics at the University of Vienna, in: Karl-Anton Fröschle u. a. (Ed.), Reflexive Inner Views from the University: Disciplinary Stories Between Science, Society and Politics, V & R unipress 2015, p. 203
  7. ^ Emmanuel de Chambost: A history of Cameca, in: Peter Hawkes, Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics 167, Elsevier 2011, pp. 1–120
  8. ^ Mattauch-Herzog-Förderpreis , DGMS
personal data
SURNAME Duke, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Herzog, Richard Franz Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH September 26, 1999