Papers of Arthur M. Wolfe (1939-2014), American astrophysicist who for a decade directed the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (CASS) at UC San Diego. Wolfe was recognized for his discoveries of star formations and the early universe.
Arthur M. Wolfe Papers, ca. 1961-2014 (MSS 775)
Extent: 15.6 Linear feet (39 archives boxes)
Arthur M. Wolfe was born in Brooklyn, New York on April 29th 1939. He graduated from Forest Hills High School in Queens, completed his Bachelor of Science degree in physics from City College of New York's Queens College in 1961, and completed his Masters of Science from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey in 1963. Wolfe earned his PhD at the University of Texas, Austin in 1967, held post-doctoral fellowships at University of California, San Diego and University of Cambridge in the UK, and was an Exchange Fellow at the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute, National Academy of Sciences, Moscow in 1971.
Along with his mentor, Rainer K. Sachs at the University of Texas, Wolfe discovered the now termed Sachs-Wolfe effect, which describes the effect of gravitational potentials on the anisotropy of the microwave background, highlighted in Wolfe's doctoral thesis and their paper "Perturbations of a Cosmological Model and Angular Variations of the Microwave Background" in Astrophysical Journal vol. 147, January 1967.
Wolfe made significant contributions in a variety of research areas including theoretical cosmology, experimental physics, and observational physics. His primary research focus was to study gas in galaxies of the early universe. He launched the field of DLAs or Damped Lyman-alpha [Ly-α] systems in 1986 with data collected at the Lick Observatory, a multi-campus research unit of the University of California, headquartered at the University of California Santa Cruz.
Wolfe taught physics at the University of Pittsburgh from 1973-1989, then accepted a professorship at UC San Diego from 1989-2007. He became the director of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (CASS) from 1997-2007 and held the endowed Chancellor's Associates Chair in Physics professorship from 1997 until his retirement in 2013.
Throughout his professional career, Wolfe authored or co-authored over 90 professional research papers, including his breakthrough surveys on Damped Lyman-alpha systems, and was awarded several multiyear grants from the National Science Foundation.
Wolfe was recognized for his significant contributions to astrophysics which spanned almost five decades. He was named a Fellow from American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995), was the recipient of the Sackler Fellowship at the University of Cambridge (2004 and 2007), and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2012). Wolfe also won the Jansky Prize Lectureship awarded by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (2008). Other accolades include the naming of DLA0817g, an ancient disc [or disk] galaxy, also known as the Wolfe Disk or Wolfe Galaxy in his honor.
Wolfe died on February 17, 2014 in La Jolla, California.
Papers of Arthur M. Wolfe, American astrophysicist who for a decade directed the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (CASS) at UC San Diego. Wolfe was recognized for his discoveries of star formations and the early universe. The materials document Wolfe's extensive professional career and include writings, course lecture notes, notebooks, professional correspondence, grant reports and proposals, and research files.
Arranged in seven series: 1) BIOGRAPHICAL, 2) CORRESPONDENCE, 3) NOTEBOOKS, 4) COURSE LECTURE NOTES, 5) WRITINGS, 6) PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES, and 7) RESEARCH NOTES.
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