De Wolff was born in the
Dutch East Indies as the youngest of four children. His father was Maarten de Wolff, a civil engineering engineer, and his mother was Hermine Elizabeth van Vliet. From 1929 the family lived in
Medan, Sumatra, where he went to school. In 1932 they returned to the Netherlands and he went to the
Hogere Burgerschool in The Hague. He studied physics at
Delft University of Technology in 1936, where he studied X-ray
powder diffraction in his graduation research. He obtained his engineering degree in 1941, during
Nazi Germany's occupation of the Netherlands, just before the Nazis closed the college in Delft. Unable to continue his studies, de Wolff, through the intercession of
Henk Dorgelo, went to work at the Technical Physics Department of the
Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research. In 1951 de Wolff obtained his PhD from
Henk Dorgelo with a thesis entitled
Contributions to the theory and practice of quantitative determinations by the X-ray powder diffraction method. In 1958 de Wolff became professor of theoretical and applied physics at the
Delft University of Technology, a position he held until his retirement in 1984. He was chairman of the Applied Physics Department (1971–1973) and of the Physics Practicum department (1974–1980). He also chaired the Committee on the Nomenclature of Symmetry at the
International Union of Crystallography. == Honors and awards ==