Dr. Graf was born in Budapest, Hungary, and earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1944 from the University of Budapest. He fled Hungary as a political refugee in 1956 and moved to Canada, where he worked as an industrial researcher. He moved to the United States two years later and was an assistant editor at Chemical Abstracts in Columbus, Ohio. In 1960, he was appointed associate professor of chemistry at Youngstown (Ohio) University, and joined the faculty at NDSU in 1966.

Although a member of the Biochemistry Department, Dr. Graf was involved in the university's coatings and polymers program. He retired in 1990. There are no immediate survivors.