Emil Wolf

Emil Wolf
Born	July 30, 1922 Prague, Czechoslovakia
Nationality	Czech-American
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	Bristol University
Known for	Coherence Theory Wolf effect
Awards	Frederic Ives Medal (1978) Michelson Medal (1980) Max Born Award (1987) Marconi Medal (1987)
Scientific career
Fields	Physicist
Institutions	University of Edinburgh University of Manchester University of Rochester
Doctoral advisor	Edward H. Linfoot
Other academic advisors	Max Born
Doctoral students	Kenro Miyamoto Yutaka Kano Chandra Lal Mehta Demosthenes Dialetis Gabriel Bédard Girish Agarwal Éamon Lalor Ashok Kumar Jaiswal Deva Pattanayak Anthony J. Devaney Mandyam D Srinivas John T. Foley M. Suhail Zubairy Ari T. Friberg Alexander Starikov Kisik Kim Avshalom Gamliel Brian Cairns Daniel F. V. James Weijian Wang Marek W. Kowarz David G. Fischer P. Scott Carney Gregory J Gbur Sergey A. Ponomarenko Hema Roychowdhury Mayukh Lahiri

Emil Wolf (born July 30, 1922) is a Czech born American physicist who made advancements in physical optics, including diffraction, coherence properties of optical fields, spectroscopy of partially coherent radiation, and the theory of direct scattering and inverse scattering. He is also the author of several works on optics.

Life and career

Wolf was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He was forced to leave his native country when the Germans invaded; After brief periods in Italy and France (where he worked for the Czech government in exile), he came to the United Kingdom in 1940. He received his B.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics (1945), and PhD in Mathematics from Bristol University, England, in 1948. Between 1951 and 1954 he worked at the University of Edinburgh with Max Born, writing the famous text-book on Optics now usually known simply as 'Born and Wolf'. After a period on the Faculty of the University of Manchester, he moved to the United States in 1959 to take a position at the University of Rochester. He is currently (2012) the Wilson Professor of Optical Physics at the University of Rochester. He is a naturalized US citizen. He was president of the Optical Society of America in 1978. Wolf now resides in Cloverwood in Pittsford New York with his wife.

He also predicted a new mechanism that produces redshift and blueshift, that is not due to moving sources (Doppler effect), that has subsequently been confirmed experimentally (called the Wolf Effect). Technically, he found that two non-Lambertian sources that emit beamed energy, can interact in a way that causes a shift in the spectral lines. It is analogous to a pair of tuning forks with similar frequencies (pitches), connected together mechanically with a sounding board; there is a strong coupling that results in the resonant frequencies getting "dragged down" in pitch. The Wolf Effect can produce either redshifts or blueshifts, depending on the observer's point of view, but is redshifted when the observer is head-on. A subsequent 1999 article by Sisir Roy et al. have suggested that the Wolf Effect may explain discordant redshift in certain quasars Ref.

Works

Wolf is a very well known author in the field of optics. Along with Max Born, he co-wrote Principles of Optics of one of the standard textbooks of optics commonly known as "Born and Wolf". He also co-authored, along with Leonard Mandel, Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics. He is the author of Introduction to the Theory of Coherence and Polarization of Light and Selected Works of Emil Wolf with Commentary (World Scientific Publishing, 2001, ISBN 981-281-187-7). He also edits the Progress in Optics series of books since its inception in 1962.

Awards, memberships and degrees

Awards

• Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America (1977)
• Albert A. Michelson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1980)
• Max Born Award of the Optical Society of America (1987)
• Marconi Medal of the Italian National Research Council (1987)
• Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Academy of Science (1991)
• Medal of the Union of Czechoslovak Mathematicians and Physicists (1991)
• Gold Medal of Palacký University of Olomouc, Czechoslovakia (1991)
• G. G. Stokes Award of SPIE (2010)

Memberships

• Honorary member of the Optical Society of America (President in 1978)
• Honorary member of the Optical Societies of India and Australia

Honorary degrees

• University of Groningen, the Netherlands (1989)
• University of Edinburgh (1990)
• Palacký University of Olomouc (1992)
• University of Bristol (1997)
• Université Laval, Quebec (1997)
• University of Franche-Comté, France (1999)
• Aalborg University, Denmark (1999).

See also

• Past presidents of the Optical Society of America
• Progress in Optics

References

• Born, Max, and Wolf, Emil (1999). Principles of Optics: Electromagnetic Theory of Propagation, Interference and Diffraction of Light (7th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 986. ISBN 9780521642224.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

External links

• Emil Wolf. Home Page at University of Rochester.
• Principles of Optics: Electromagnetic Theory of Propagation, Interference and Diffraction of Light (English) Sample chapters.
• Wolf's Math Genealogy
• Articles Published by early OSA Presidents Journal of the Optical Society of America