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Philip Wolfe

1927 – 2016

American mathematician

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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

Birth century
Nationality
Education
University of California, Berkeley
Awards
John von Neumann Theory Prize; Fellow of the Econometric Society
Also known as
Philip Starr Wolfe

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

· Wikipedia: Philip Wolfe

· Wikidata: Q15758620

· 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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