Background

František Wolf was born on November 30, 1904 in Prostejov, the Austro-Hungarian empire (now the Czech Republic); the elder of two children of a maker of fine furniture.

Education

František became fascinated by science and mathematics early enough and after completing his school education he entered the Charles University in Prague to study physics. Later he turned to mathematics as a graduate student at Masaryk University, where he received the degree Rerum Naturum Doctor in 1928.

Career

Wolf began his career as a secondary school teacher and taught mathematics in schools until 1937. That year he was appointed as a Privatdozent at the Charles University in Prague. Shortly after his appointment, Wolf travelled to England to study at Cambridge University with G.H. Hardy and J.E. Littlewood. In 1939 Wolf published two papers. The first was An extension of the Phragmén-Lindelöf theorem, published in the Journal of the London Mathematical Society. The second, On summable trigonometrical series: an extension of uniqueness theorems, appeared in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society.

With the annexation of Austria by the Nazis in March, 1938, Wolf returned to Prague and was inducted into the army. His brief service ended a year later with the occupation of his country by the Nazis. But Wolf's views made it impossible for him to remain under German occupation and he left for Sweden, having received an invitation from the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Stockholm. The German occupiers allowed him to leave the country, but only for a period of three weeks. However, Wolf did not return after the three weeks, and, joining the Swedish underground, remained in Stockholm until 1941, surviving on a small grant from the Swedish Government. That year he received an invitation to teach for a year at Macalester College in Minneapolis.

Getting from Sweden to the United States was difficult with World War II at its height, so Wolf set off east travelling on the Trans Siberian Railway, then crossing Japan, before landing on the west coast of the United States. On his way to Saint Paul, Wolf met Griffith C. Evans, the Head of the Mathematics Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Evans offered Wolf a position at Berkeley, but František was now committed to Macalester. However, he taught at Macalester College only for a year, and then joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley as Instructor of Mathematics in 1942.

Soon after he came to Berkeley, Wolf became interested in the perturbation of linear operators. His most influential papers were probably those concerned with the analytical perturbation of operators on Banach spaces and his studies on the essential spectrum of certain singular elliptic differential operators. The essential spectrum consists of those points in the spectrum which are not isolated eigenvalues. Wolf showed that such points had a local origin and could be traced to components of the set of points on the boundary of the region where the ellipticity breaks down.

In 1951 Wolf and Beckenbach founded the Pacific Journal of Mathematics, a major international mathematical research journal sponsored by a dozen or more West Coast universities. Wolf retired in 1972, and following that he went to the University of Valle in Guatemala where he helped set up a graduate programme. He suffered an accident in his garden, having a fall which badly affected his health. From that time on his health declined leading eventually to his death.

Achievements

• František Wolf is widely known as one of the most outstanding mathematicians and educators of his time. He contributed a lot to trigonometry and mathematical analysis, in particular to the study of the perturbation of linear operators. Wolf lectured widely on his work at many United States and European universities. In recognition of his research, the Free University of Brussels awarded him a medal in 1960.
  
  During his time at the University of California, Berkeley, František was instrumental in bringing new faculty to the department in the field of analysis, both through attracting promising young people and through appointment of outstanding scholars. His interest in perturbation theory had been stimulated particularly by the work of the Japanese physicist and mathematician, Tosio Kato. He played a major role in the effort that brought Kato to the department in 1962.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Operators in Banach Space Which Admit a Generalized Spectral Decomposition: Technical Report No. 14

Politics

Wolf became involved in politics early in his career and was a strong supporter of the idea behind the new country. As a result of his political activities, he had to leave his country during its occupation by the Nazis. Nevertheless, he remained a strong supporter of the well-being of Czechoslovakia for the rest of his life. He had found many Czech immigrants in Minnesota, and he was a strong supporter of the Czech community in the Bay Area. During the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945, a dispute arose in the Czechoslovak delegation, and Wolf was chosen on one occasion to address the gathering on behalf of his country. The tragic death of Jan Masaryk in 1948 was a great blow to him.

Views

Wolf’s interest in physics remained throughout his life and can be seen in his choice of research problems. While his early research was centered in classical analysis, he soon became an advocate of the use of Banach spaces and the methods of abstract analysis.

Wolf held a strong interest in the improvement of teaching. For many years he directed National Science Foundation summer institutes at Berkeley for gifted high school students and secondary school teachers.

Membership

For many years Wolf served as a member of the Committee on Arts and Lectures which brought performing artists to the University of California, Berkeley.

Personality

Wolf was a person of personal warmth and charm. He had a great interest in people and in cultural activities. He especially loved music and was accomplished on the piano and violin.

František had a very intuitive, almost romantic, approach to mathematics. His seminar was the nucleus for his teaching of graduate students. He was also a popular and enthusiastic teacher of undergraduates.

Connections

During Wolf's first visit to Berkeley he met a young botanist Myrtle Richey. They married in 1945 and their son Thomas Wolf was born two years later.

Spouse:

Myrtle Richey

Son:

Thomas Wolf

Friend:

Jan Masaryk

Jan Garrigue Masaryk (14 September 1886 – 10 March 1948) was a Czech diplomat and politician who served as the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940 to 1948. He was the son of Tomas Masaryk, the President of the new republic of Czechoslovakia.