Wolf was born into a Jewish family in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He was forced to leave his native country when the Germans invaded. After brief periods in Italy and France (where he worked for the Czech government in exile), he moved to the United Kingdom in 1940. He received his B.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics (1945), and Ph.D. in Mathematics from Bristol University, England, in 1948. Between 1951 and 1954 he worked at the University of Edinburgh with Max Born, writing the famous textbook Principles of Optics now usually known simply as "Born and Wolf". After a period on the Faculty of the University of Manchester, he moved to the United States in 1959 to take a position at the University of Rochester. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen and was the Wilson Professor of Optical Physics at the University of Rochester. He was president of the Optical Society of America in 1978. Until his death Wolf resided in Cloverwood in Pittsford, New York, with his wife.