Oliver R. Wulf
California Institute of Technology
April 22, 1897 - January 11, 1987
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Scientific Discipline: Geophysics Membership Type:
Emeritus
(elected 1949)
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Oliver Wulf researched the physical and chemical relationships between light, atmospheric gases, and weather on Earth. His childhood fascination with electricity and magnetism came full circle when Wulf began studying how the Sun and Moon influence electricity and magnetism in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Wulf graduated from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1920 with a degree in chemistry. He worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a junior chemist, preparing ozone and studying its molecular weight, but left science temporarily to accept a job with the Waterbury Company as an apprentice to a machinist. He was offered a scholarship to attend graduate school at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and declined initially, due to concerns about money. After his marriage, however, he accepted the offer and completed his PhD at Caltech in 1926.
Wulf’s postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, focused on the photochemistry of ozone. He went to work for the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils in the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a senior scientist, continuing his research with ozone and studying nitrogen oxides. In 1939 he became a senior meteorologist with the U.S. Weather Bureau, and he remained with the bureau until his retirement in 1967.
During his time with the U.S. Weather Bureau, Wulf was placed on assignment to teach meteorology to Air Force cadets at the academy and to continue his researchwith an appointment as full professor in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1932 and the Hillebrand Prize from the American Chemical Society in 1935.
