George Wolf

June 16, 1922 - August 31, 2014

George Wolf, Ph.D., of Berkeley, CA, died August 31, 2014. He is survived by his loving wife Patricia (Paddy) Wolf, 90, to whom he was married for 66 years, as well as his sister, 3 children, and 3 grandchildren.

George was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1922. His father was a lawyer and his mother a dentist. In his own words, “We were non-observant Jews.” In 1938, he and his sister were taken to England by a “Kindertransport”, organized by the British Quakers, to escape the Nazis. After living in London for a short time, George, along with thousands of other Germans and Austrians, was sent to an internment camp on the Isle of Man. There he studied at a camp university organized by the Jewish refugees (among whom were many eminent German and Austrian professors) for his entrance examination to London University. He was released from the camp in 1941 and began to study chemistry at London University in 1942. He went on to study at Oxford University (Balliol College) where he received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1947. While at Oxford, he met his future wife, Patricia Nicol.

George and Paddy immigrated to America in 1948 and were married that same year. George started his academic career as a postdoc at Harvard. He became an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois in 1951 and later became Associate Professor of Physiological Chemistry. In 1962, he went to MIT and joined the Department of Nutrition where he did research and taught for the next 26 years, rising to Professor of Physiological Chemistry in 1973. His research centered almost entirely on vitamins, particularly the metabolism of vitamin A and its role in human health and disease, on which he published over 100 scientific articles. He organized the first international symposium on vitamin A in the late 1960s. He retired from MIT in 1988 and moved to Berkeley, CA. He became an adjunct professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at UC Berkeley that same year. He worked until the age of 87.

Throughout his academic life, George and Paddy were hosts to many foreign students, especially Coolidge Pathfinders from Balliol College whom they hosted for over 40 years. Their home was a whirlwind of dinner parties and houseguests. George and Paddy were great Italophiles, and he had a many postdocs from Italy. George had two sabbaticals in Italy, one in Rome and his final one before retiring in Bari. George and Paddy loved the outdoors. They went on many outings and hikes in the Bay Area right up until the time of George’s death.

George was a charming man and never lost his old world Viennese manners. He will be missed by all who knew him.