Isaac Wolfson

Isaac Wolfson was the son of a Jewish cabinet maker, Solomon Wolfson, an immigrant from Rajgród, Poland who settled in the Gorbals in Glasgow, Scotland. His mother was Nechi Surah Wilamowski. He was educated at Queen's Park School, Glasgow.

He was highly capable in mathematics but could not afford to train as an accountant so he became a salesman for his father, who made cheap tables and chairs for local people. He is said to have been a brilliant salesman. At this time he made many business friends who worked with him ever afterwards.

In 1920 he left for London. There he started his own business, selling clocks, mirrors and upholstery. In 1926 he married Edith Specterman. His father-in-law owned a chain of suburban cinemas and helped him financially in his early days.

Wolfson was a brilliant financier and this was central to his early success. Later he backed French–British financier, tycoon, and politician James Goldsmith with a £1 million loan which Wolfson charged a whopping 100 per cent interest on. He also underwrote the hire purchase agreements of washing machine entrepreneur John Bloom at Rolls Razor but withdrew financial support in 1964, leading to the company's voluntary liquidation.

In 1954 Wolfson was part of Kemsley-Winnick Television, which won the initial ITV weekend contracts for the Midlands and the North of England. However, shortly after the award of the contracts the consortium was shown not to have the financial backing required, causing it to collapse.

Until 1960 Wolfson lived in Worcester; he then moved to London. He received a baronetcy in the Queen's 1962 New Year's Honours list, becoming Baronet as Sir Isaac Wolfson of St. Marylebone on 19 February 1962. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1963. In 1971 he was awarded the Freedom of the City of Glasgow. He died in Israel in 1991, aged 93.

Wolfson's wife, the former Edith Specterman, was a vice-president of the English Jewish Welfare Board. The Lady Wolfson Building, a small extension to the John Rylands Library, was opened in 1962 adjoining the 1920 extension.

Isaac and Edith Wolfson's only child, a son, Leonard, was born in 1927.

Wolfson was a devout Orthodox Jew. He followed his father's example and the middle-European community from which he came. He said, "No man should have more than £100,000. The rest should go to charity". He gave immense amounts to charities: from 1948, he included Zionist charities at the urging of his friend Israel Sieff. In 1962, he was appointed president of the United Synagogue, the first to be selected from descendants of the nineteenth-century waves of immigrants.

In 1955, Wolfson established the Wolfson Foundation to support the advancement of education, health, and youth activities. Through this foundation, he contributed to the creation of Wolfson College, Oxford (where he was a Founder Fellow), Wolfson College, Cambridge, the Wolfson Building at Somerville College, Oxford, the Wolfson Building at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Wolfson Room at University of Wales, Lampeter, among many other projects over the years. He remains the only non-religious figure to have a college named after him at both Oxford and Cambridge.

Professorships named after him exist at Bar-Ilan University, University of Haifa, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Oxford, and Tel Aviv University. He was also a benefactor of the John Rylands Library, financing a small extension in 1961. The Edith and Isaac Wolfson Trust financed two housing projects in Israel, both called Kiryat Wolfson, and the family supported the founding of Wolfson Medical Center in Tel Aviv.

Wolfson is one of a few individuals to have colleges named after them at both Oxford and Cambridge.