WOLFF (Christian), baron of the Roman empire, privy counsellor to the king of Prussia, and chancellor of the university of Halle in Saxony, was born at Breslau in 1679. After studying philosophy and mathematics at Breslau and Jena, he obtained permission to give lectures at Leipzig; which in 1703, he opened with a dissertation called Philosophia practica universalis, methodo mathematica conscripta: which served greatly to enhance the reputation of his talents. He published two other dissertations the same year; the first De rotis dentatis, the other De algorithmo infinitesimali differentiali. He now obtained the professorship of mathematics at Halle, and was admitted into the society at Leipzig, at that time engaged in publishing the Acta Eruditorum. The king of Prussia, in 1721, made him counsellor to the court with considerable appointments, and he was chosen a member of the Royal Society of London. Wolff, however, in the midst of all this prosperity, raised an ecclesiastical storm directed against his own head, by a Latin oration he delivered in praise of the Chinese philosophy: every pulpit immediately resounded against his tenets, and the faculty of theology, who entered into a strict examination of his productions, resolving that the doctrine he taught was dangerous to the last degree, an order was obtained in 1723 for displacing him, and commanding him to leave Halle in 24 hours. Wolff now retired to Cassel, where he obtained the professorship of mathematics and philosophy in the university of Marbourg, with the title of counsellor to the landgrave of Hesse; and it was in this retreat he published the chief parts of his extensive works. The king of Prussia however recovering at length from the prejudices he had been made to conceive against Wolff, wanted to re-establish him at Halle; which Wolff for a time chose to decline, but at last submitted: he returned therefore in 1741, invested with the characters of privy counsellor, vice chancellor, and professor of the law of nature and of nations. After the death of Ludwig, the king raised him to the dignity of chancellor of the university; and the elector of Bavaria created him a baron of the empire of his own free accord. He died at Halle in 1754, after leading a life filled up with a train of actions as wise and systematical as his writings; and of these he published a great number.