Emil Wolf joins the School of Optics / CREOL

Professor Emil Wolf has joined the University of Central Florida as “Provost’s Distinguished Research Professor of Optics”. He will spend every Fall semester here at the School of Optics/CREOL while continuing as the Wilson Professor of Optical Physics and Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester. His main areas of research are in physical optics, particularly in studies of coherence properties of optical fields; spectroscopy of partially coherent radiation, in diffraction and in scattering. He is the co-author, with Nobel Laureate Max Born, of the well-known book Principles of Optics, which was not long ago published in its seventh edition. Professor Wolf is also the co-author, with Leonard Mandel, of Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics, published in 1995. He is also the editor of Progress in Optics, an ongoing series of volumes containing review articles on optics and related subjects. Forty-two volumes have been published in this series to date, all under his editorship. 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, Denmark, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Canada and France. He has a very rich history, growing up in Prague and fleeing Czechoslovakia in 1939 because of the Nazi occupation. He eventually ended up in Great Britain, where he earned a B.Sc. degree in mathematics from the University of Bristol in 1945, and the Ph.D. in 1948. He Affiliates' Day 2002 April 5, 2002