每年颁发五到六项沃尔夫奖，授予杰出的在世科学家和艺术家，以表彰他们为人类利益和人民友好关系方面的成就。在科学领域，奖项分为农业、化学、数学、医学、物理学；在艺术领域，奖项每年在建筑、音乐、绘画和雕塑之间轮换。每个领域的奖项包括证书和 10 万美元的现金奖励。
该奖项自 1978 年起由沃尔夫基金会颁发，该基金会由发明家、外交家和慈善家里卡多·沃尔夫博士（1887-1981 年）及其妻子弗朗西斯卡·苏比拉纳-沃尔夫（1900-1981 年）于 1976 年创立，旨在为人类的利益促进科学和艺术。下表总结了沃尔夫数学奖的获得者。
| 年份 | 获奖者 |
| 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 | 未颁发 |
| 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 | 未颁发 |
| 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 | 未颁发 |
| 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) |
