Wolfgang R. Wasow (25 July 1909 – 11 September 1993) was an American mathematician known for his work in asymptotic expansions and their applications in differential equations.
In 1921, Wolfgang Wasow was sent to a boarding school, the Freie Schul- und Werkgemeinschaft Letzlingen, founded by Bernhard Uffrecht, located in the Magdeburg district of Prussia.
After studies at Humboldt and Sorbonne, he enrolled at Göttingen and passed the Staatsexamen (a government licensing examination for future teachers) in mathematics, physics and geology in 1933.
Wasow left Germany in 1933 and spent time in Paris and Cambridge before taking a job as a teacher at boarding schools for children of (predominantly Jewish) German emigrants in Italy, first in Florence (1935–37) and then in Lana in Alto Adige (1937–38).
Starting with his 1941 PhD thesis, Wasow was one of the main contributors to developing a mathematical theory of the boundary layer problem and singular perturbations.
His fundamental research is responsible for many other rapid developments in this field since 1940, and continues to play a vital role in modern theory and current applications.
Readers will note that the name "singular perturbations" (which was only coined several years later by K. O. Friedrichs or W. Wasow or possibly jointly, but neither is now able to recall the details) does not appear anywhere explicitly!