Born in Manhattan on February 13, 1923, Wolf attained a B.A. from Columbia University in 1944, an M.A. from Columbia in 1948, and a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1952.

Wolf was an American nuclear and organic chemist. Wolf was chairman of the Chemistry Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory, research professor in the Department of Psychiatry at New York University a member of the National Academy of Sciences, The Journal of Nuclear Medicine said that his “discoveries were instrumental in the development of positron emission tomography (PET)” and that he “made pioneering contributions over nearly 50 years in the field of organic radiochemistry”. The New York Times said that Wolf “helped create some of today’s most sophisticated diagnostic tools” and that he “advanced the field of organic radiochemistry, radiopharmacology and nuclear medicine” throughout his career of 50 years. The National Academy of Sciences said that “he pioneered the development of labeling techniques that used the reactions of hot atoms”.

He is most well known for the role he played in the development of 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose (18FDG), a radiotracer that stimulated more than two decades of progress in the use of human neuroimaging to study mental illness. 18FDG remains the most sensitive tracer ever developed to image tumors and tumor metastases, and it has provided the means of directly studying the effects of drugs on the human brain. (https://doi.org/10.17226/9977)

Awards

1971 Seaborg Award: Alfred P. Wolf