Five or six Wolf prizes are awarded yearly to outstanding living scientists and artists for achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations among peoples. In science, the fields are agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics; and in arts, the prize rotates annually among architecture, music, painting and sculpture. The prize in each area consists of a diploma and a cash award of $100,000.
The prize has been awarded since 1978 by the Wolf Foundation, which was established in 1976 by Dr. Ricardo Wolf (1887-1981), inventor, diplomat, and philanthropist, and his wife Francisca Subirana-Wolf (1900-1981), to promote science and art for the benefit of mankind. The table below summarizes Wolf prize recipients in mathematics.
| year | recipients |
| 1978 | Izrail M. Gelfand (Moscow State University, Moscow, USSR) |
| Carl L. Siegel (Georg-August University, Göttingen, W. Germany) | |
| 1979 | Jean Leray (College de France, Paris, France) |
| André Weil (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA) | |
| 1980 | Henri Cartan (Université de Paris, Paris, France) |
| Andrei N. Kolmogorov (Moscow State University, Moscow, USSR) | |
| 1981 | Lars V. Ahlfors (Harvard University, Cambridge, USA) |
| Oscar Zariski (Harvard University, Cambridge, USA) | |
| 1982 | Hassler Whitney (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA) |
| Mark Grigor'evich Krein (Ukrainian S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Odessa, USSR) | |
| 1983-84 | Shiing S. Chern (University of California, Berkeley, USA) |
| Paul Erdős (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary) | |
| 1984-85 | Kunihiko Kodaira (The Japan Academy, Tokyo, Japan) |
| Hans Lewy (University of California, Berkeley, USA) | |
| 1986 | Samuel Eilenberg (Columbia University, N.Y., USA) |
| Atle Selberg (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA) | |
| 1987 | Kiyoshi Ito (Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan) |
| Peter D. Lax (New York University, N.Y., USA) | |
| 1988 | Friedrich Hirzebruch (Max-Planck-Institut and University of Bonn, Bonn, W. Germany) |
| Lars Hormander (University of Lund, Lund, Sweden) | |
| 1989 | Alberto P. Calderon (University of Chicago, Chicago, USA) |
| John W. Milnor (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA) | |
| 1990 | Ennio de Giorgi (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy) |
| Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro (Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel) | |
| 1991 | not awarded |
| 1992 | Lennart A. E. Carleson (University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden, and UCLA, Los Angeles, USA) |
| John G. Thompson (University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K.) | |
| 1993 | Mikhael Gromov (Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES), Bures-Sur-Yvette, France) |
| Jacques Tits (College de France, Paris, France) | |
| 1994-95 | Jürgen K. Moser (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland) |
| 1995-96 | Robert Langlands (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA) |
| Andrew J. Wiles (Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., USA) | |
| 1996-97 | Joseph B. Keller (Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA) |
| Yakov G. Sinai (Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., USA and Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics, Moscow, Russia) | |
| 1998 | not awarded |
| 1999 | László Lovász (Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA and Eőtvős University, Budapest, Hungary) |
| Elias M. Stein (Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA) | |
| 2000 | Raoul Bott (Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., USA) |
| Jean-Pierre Serre (College de France, Paris, France) | |
| 2001 | Vladimir I. Arnold (Steklov Mathematical Institute, Moscow, Russia and University Paris-Dauphine, Paris, France) |
| Saharon Shelah (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel) | |
| 2002-03 | Mikio Sato (Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan) |
| John T. Tate (Department of Mathematics, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA) | |
| 2004 | not awarded |
| 2005 | Gregory A. Margulis (Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA) |
| Sergei P. Novikov (University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA) | |
| 2006-07 | Stephen Smale (University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California USA) |
| Harry Furstenberg (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel) | |
| 2008 | Pierre R. Deligne (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, USA) |
| Phillip A. Griffiths (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, USA) | |
| David B. Mumford (Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA) |
