About Philip Wolfe
Lived 1927 – 2016 (aged 89). Philip Wolfe was an American mathematician, computer scientist, statistician and university teacher.
Career In 1954, he was offered an instructorship at Princeton, where he worked on generalizations of linear programming, such as quadratic programming and general non-linear programming, leading to the Frank–Wolfe algorithm in joint work with Marguerite Frank, then a visitor at Princeton. When Maurice Sion was on sabbatical at the Institute for Advanced Study, Sion and Wolfe published in 1957 an example of a zero-sum game without a minimax value. Wolfe joined RAND corporation in 1957, where he worked with George Dantzig, resulting in the now well known Dantzig–Wolfe decomposition method. In 1965, he moved to IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
Honors and awards He received the John von Neumann Theory Prize in 1992, jointly with Alan Hoffman.
Selected publications
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Important facts
People in Philip Wolfe's life
Named in this biography and alive at the same time
Contemporaries
People whose lives overlapped Philip Wolfe's
Frequently asked questions
Who was Philip Wolfe?
American mathematician
When was Philip Wolfe born?
Philip Wolfe was born on 11 August 1927 in San Francisco.
When did Philip Wolfe die?
Philip Wolfe died on 29 December 2016 in Ossining.
What was Philip Wolfe's occupation?
Philip Wolfe was a mathematician, computer scientist, statistician and university teacher.
What nationality was Philip Wolfe?
Philip Wolfe was American.
Sources & further reading
· DBpedia: Philip Wolfe (mathematician)
Cite this page
APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Philip Wolfe. https://biography.guide/philip-wolfe-mathematician/
MLA: "Philip Wolfe." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/philip-wolfe-mathematician/.
Chicago: "Philip Wolfe." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/philip-wolfe-mathematician/.
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