Emil Wolf was a Czech-born American physicist who became one of the most recognized optical scientists of his generation and served on the University of Rochester faculty for more than 50 years. Born on July 30, 1922, he received his B.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics in 1945 and his Ph.D. in Physics in 1948, both from the University of Bristol. Following research positions at Cambridge University, the University of Edinburgh with Nobel laureate Max Born, and the University of Manchester, he joined the University of Rochester in 1959 as Associate Professor of Optics. He was appointed Professor of Physics in 1961, Professor of Optics in 1978, and became the Wilson Professor of Optical Physics in 1987, establishing himself as a leading authority in the field of physical optics.
Wolf co-authored the seminal textbook Principles of Optics with Max Born, first published in 1959 and now in its seventh edition, which remains the most cited textbook in physics and is considered the international standard graduate-level text in optics. His groundbreaking research established the foundations of optical coherence theory, for which he is often referred to as the 'Father of Coherence Theory,' and in 1954 he discovered the Wolf equations that demonstrated statistical properties of light also propagate as waves. He predicted the 'Wolf effect,' a mechanism producing redshift and blueshift not due to moving sources, which was subsequently confirmed experimentally, and discovered that non-Lambertian sources can interact to cause shifts in spectral lines. His work on correlation-induced spectral changes provided the theoretical basis for understanding how the coherence properties of light affect its spectrum, fundamentally transforming the field of optics.
Throughout his illustrious career, Wolf authored over 300 papers and several classic texts including Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics with Leonard Mandel, and served as editor of Progress in Optics for fifty volumes, creating an invaluable resource for the optics community. He was president of the Optical Society of America in 1978 and received numerous prestigious awards including the Frederic Ives Medal, Michelson Medal, Max Born Award, and Marconi Medal for his transformative contributions. Wolf mentored numerous doctoral students who became leaders in the field, including Girish Agarwal and M. Suhail Zubairy, and his theoretical frameworks continue to underpin modern optical research. Emil Wolf passed away on June 2, 2018 at age 95, leaving a profound legacy that continues to influence research in optics and photonics worldwide, with the University of Rochester establishing the Emil Wolf Graduate Fellowship in his honor.
