Emil Wolf

Biographical Sketch:

Short Biography
Professor Wolf received a Ph.D. degree from Bristol University, England, in 1948 and a D.Sc. degree from Edinburgh University, Scotland, in 1955. He is presently the Wilson Professor of Optical Physics and Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester.

He is the co-author, with Nobel Laureate Max Born, of a well-known book, Principles of Optics, first published in 1959 and now in its seventh edition. He is also the co-author, with Leonard Mandel, of Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics, published in 1995. In 2007, he published a book Introduction to the Theory of Coherence and Polarization of Light.

Professor Emil Wolf has been the editor of an ongoing series, Progress in Optics, since its inception in 1961. Fifty-one volumes have been published to date.

Professor Wolf is the recipient of numerous awards for his scientific contributions and is an honorary member of the Optical Society of America, of which he was the President in 1978. He is also an honorary member of the Optical Societies of India and Australia and is the recipient of seven honorary degrees from Universities in the Netherlands, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Canada, France and Denmark.

Research: Professor Wolf's main researches are in physical optics, particularly in studies of coherence properties of optical fields, spectroscopy of partially coherent radiation, diffraction and the theory of direct and inverse scattering.

Currently, his research group is investigating statistical optics, especially the theory of coherence and polarization of stochastic electromagnetic beams. The group is also investigating the effects of source correlations and of static and dynamic scattering on spectra of radiated and scattered fields and examining the possibility of determining structure functions of random distribution of particles from spectral changes introduced by the scattering process.