Philip Barrett Whale, (often “Barrett Whale,” “P. Barrett Whale” or “P.B. Whale”) was Leo’s first “supervisor” (equivalent to “advisor” in an American university) at the London School of Economics. When Leo arrived in the Fall of 1938, Mr. Whale interviewed him for admission into the economics PhD program. Despite what Leo himself described as rudimentary English skills, he handled himself well, impressing Mr. Whale “extremely favourably.”[1]
Mr. Whale was born on March 23, 1898, in London and died in March 1950 in Liverpool. [2]
[1] Nov. 3, 1938, in “The Postgraduate File of Leonid Hurwicz at the London School of Economics 1938 – 1939: A Summary,” p. 3, by Jim Thomas, Research Associate, STICERD, London School of Economics, dated May 26, 2009, emailed to Michael Hurwicz on Jan. 6, 2019.