Zachary Raymond Wolf (born July 26, 1958) is an American engineer, theoretical particle physicist, researcher, and lead scientist at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, who was on the SLAC team that designed LINAC Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the world's first t x-ray Free-electron Laser (FEL).

Early life and education 
Wolf was born in Decatur, Illinois the eldest son of industrialist Raymond T. Wolf, and Joan H. Wolf who was a prominent real estate mass developer in Central Illinois. Greene studied at the University of Illinois, earning a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1979, a M.S. in electrical engineering in 1981, and his Ph.D. in physics from University of California, Berkeley in 1988 supervised by Werner Hofmann.

Research 
After completing his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988, he worked as a research scientist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Menlo Park, California.

Linac Coherent Light Source 
In 2009, Wolf was on the leading SLAC research team, that designed the first Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). The LCLS is the first laser in the world to produce hard x-rays, which can be used to see down to the level of atoms and molecules. During the research and trials of designing the LCLS, the SLAC design team added nearly half a mile onto the original two-mile long accelerator facility in Menlo Park, California. The LCLS uses the final one-third of the accelerator to produce powerful pulses of x-ray laser light. As the world's most powerful X-ray laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source creates unique light that can resolve detail the size of atoms and see processes that occur in less than one tenth of a trillionth of a second. At these unprecedented speeds and scales, the LCLS has embarked on groundbreaking research in physics, structural biology, energy science, chemistry and a host of other fields.

Personal life 
Wolf currently resides in Half Moon Bay, California. He is divorced and has three adult-children that live in California.

Selected publications 

 "Results of magnetic field measurements of 40 mm aperture 17-m long SSC model collider dipole magnets," in IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 307-310, Jan. 1992, doi: 10.1109/20.119872.
 "Superconducting focusing solenoid for X-band klystron," Proceedings Particle Accelerator Conference, 1995, pp. 1405-1407 vol.3, doi: 10.1109/PAC.1995.505237.
 "Dipole magnets for the SLAC 50 GeV A-Line upgrade," Proceedings Particle Accelerator Conference, 1995, pp. 1366-1368 vol.2, doi: 10.1109/PAC.1995.505224.
 "Results from a prototype permanent magnet dipole-quadrupole hybrid for the PEP-II B-factory," Proceedings of the 1997 Particle Accelerator Conference (Cat. No.97CH36167), 1997, pp. 3330-3332 vol.3, doi: 10.1109/PAC.1997.753198.
 "Alignment of the VISA undulator," Proceedings of the 1999 Particle Accelerator Conference (Cat. No.99CH36366), 1999, pp. 1390-1392 vol.2, doi: 10.1109/PAC.1999.795558.
 "Adjustable permanent quadrupoles for the Next Linear Collider," PACS2001. Proceedings of the 2001 Particle Accelerator Conference (Cat. No.01CH37268), 2001, pp. 217-219 vol.1, doi: 10.1109/PAC.2001.987474.
 "Separators for SLAC B-Factory," PACS2001. Proceedings of the 2001 Particle Accelerator Conference (Cat. No.01CH37268), 2001, pp. 3236-3238 vol.5, doi: 10.1109/PAC.2001.988069.
 "Adjustable permanent quadrupoles using rotating magnet material rods for the Next Linear Collider," in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 301-304, March 2002, doi: 10.1109/TASC.2002.1018405.
 "High reliability prototype quadrupole for the Next Linear Collider," in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 270-273, March 2002, doi: 10.1109/TASC.2002.1018398.
 "Fast Neutron Damage Studies on NDFEB Materials," Proceedings of the 2005 Particle Accelerator Conference, 2005, pp. 2351-2353, doi: 10.1109/PAC.2005.1591107.
 "A Novel In-Situ Radiation Damage Diagnostic System for Undulators," in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 69, no. 6, pp. 3687-3697, June 2020, doi: 10.1109/TIM.2019.2936715.

References 

1958 births
Living people
American physicists
American chemists
Stanford University faculty
UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni