František Wolf was a Czech

Czech people

Czechs, or Czech people are a western Slavic people of Central Europe, living predominantly in the Czech Republic. Small populations of Czechs also live in Slovakia, Austria, the United States, the United Kingdom, Chile, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Russia and other countries...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 known for his contributions to trigonometry

Trigonometry

Trigonometry is a branch of mathematics that studies triangles and the relationships between their sides and the angles between these sides. Trigonometry defines the trigonometric functions, which describe those relationships and have applicability to cyclical phenomena, such as waves...

 and mathematical analysis

Mathematical analysis

Mathematical analysis, which mathematicians refer to simply as analysis, has its beginnings in the rigorous formulation of infinitesimal calculus. It is a branch of pure mathematics that includes the theories of differentiation, integration and measure, limits, infinite series, and analytic functions...

, specifically the study of the perturbation of linear operators.

Wolf was born 1904 in Prostějov

Prostejov

Prostějov is a city in the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic. Today the city is known for its fashion industry and special military forces based there....

, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and now part of the Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

, the elder of two children of a furniture maker. He studied physics at Charles University

Charles University in Prague

Charles University in Prague is the oldest and largest university in the Czech Republic. Founded in 1348, it was the first university in Central Europe and is also considered the earliest German university...

 in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

, and then mathematics at Masaryk University

Masaryk University

Masaryk University is the second largest university in the Czech Republic, a member of the Compostela Group and the Utrecht Network. Founded in 1919 in Brno as the third Czech university , it now consists of nine faculties and 42,182 students...

 in Brno

Brno

Brno by population and area is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the administrative centre of the South Moravian Region where it forms a separate district Brno-City District...

 under the supervision of Otakar Borůvka

Otakar Boruvka

Otakar Borůvka was a Czech mathematician best known today for his work in graph theory, long before this was an established mathematical discipline....

; he was awarded a doctorate in 1928. He then taught mathematics at the high school level until 1937, when he obtained a faculty position at Charles University. When the German army invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938, Wolf obtained an invitation to visit the Mittag-Leffler Institute

Mittag-Leffler Institute

The Mittag-Leffler Institute is a mathematical research institute located in Djursholm, a suburb of Stockholm. It invites scholars to participate in year-long or half-year programs in specialized mathematical subjects...

 in Sweden; he remained in Sweden as part of the underground resistance to the Germans until 1941 before emigrating to the United States. He taught at Macalester College

Macalester College

Macalester College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It was founded in 1874 as a Presbyterian-affiliated but nonsectarian college. Its first class entered September 15, 1885. The college is located on a campus in a historic residential neighborhood...

 for a year, and then joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 in 1942. At Berkeley, he was one of the co-founders of the Pacific Journal of Mathematics

Pacific Journal of Mathematics

The Pacific Journal of Mathematics is a mathematics research journal supported by a number of American, Asian and Australian universities and research institutes, and currently published on their behalf by Mathematical Sciences Publishers, a non-profit academic publishing organisation.It was...

 in 1951. He retired in 1972, but then moved to Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

 where he helped to set up a graduate program in mathematics at the University of Valle

University of Valle

The University of Valle , also called Univalle, is a public, departmental, coeducational, research university based primarily in the city of Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia. It is the largest higher education institution by student population in the southwest of the country, and the third in...

. He died on August 12, 1989 in Berkeley.