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Yankelovich Co-founder Arthur White Dies
Arthur H. White, co-founder of the research business that became Yankelovich, has died aged 90, in Stamford, Connecticut, from complications following a stroke.
White was born in 1924 in Boston, served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and received a Master's from Harvard Business School in 1951. In the late 1950s, he joined with Daniel Yankelovich and Florence Skelly Altman to form Yankelovich, Skelly & White, exploring social trends and public opinion - according to the NY Times which was one of their early clients.
The firm's methods were rigorous: the NY Times reports that White conducted a survey of reading habits in 1978 and was asked if findings were reliable - notably a report that ten percent of respondents claimed to read more than 50 books a year. White said his interviewers had asked for titles, prices and where readers bought or borrowed books, telling the Washington Post, 'We're hard-bitten skeptics'.
The subject was close to White's heart - his 'second career' involved a passion for bringing reading to as many people as possible, from helping to found the nonprofit organization Reading is Fundamental in 1966, improving access to books and reading for poor children; to working in his final days on a system through which inmates of federal prisons could read and discuss books remotely with their children and families. More generally, he served on numerous government boards and commissions in the areas of employment and prisons, and collaborated on the launch in the early 1980s of the program Jobs for Connecticut's Future, now working across many states as Jobs for the Future.
Yankelovich was acquired by WPP and merged in January 2008 into UK-based consumer trends and future research agency, Henley Centre HeadlightVision, forming The Futures Company. The name is retained in the firm's survey, the U.S. Yankelovich Monitor.
Arthur White is survived by his wife of 65 years, Vivien, his son Joe, and three grandchildren. Thanks to www.nytimes.com for most of the above.
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