Emil Wolf (July 30, 1922 – June 2, 2018) was a Czech born American physicist. He was born in Prague. He made advancements in physical optics, including diffraction, coherence properties of optical fields, spectroscopy of partially coherent radiation, and the theory of direct scattering and inverse scattering. He he co-wrote "Principles of Optics" of one of the standard textbooks of optics commonly known as "Born and Wolf".