Born on August 16, 1907, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he prepared for college at the Arnold School in Pittsburgh, which became Shade Side Academy. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity at Bowdoin, which he attended in 1924-25 before transferring to Yale, from which he graduated in 1929. He received a master of business administration degree from Northwestern University in 1949 and a doctor of business administration degree from Georgia State University in 1965.

He was associated with the Fillmore Foundry in Buffalo, New York, from 1929 to 1934, when he joined Roger W. Somers & Company in Chicago, Illinois, where he was office manager, manager of the tax department, and a partner. From 1942 to 1944 he served on the comptroller’s staff of Owens-Corning Fiberglass Corporation in Toledo, Ohio, and from 1944 to 1958 he was a management consultant and a certified public accountant, except for two years, 1951 and 1952, when he was a controller of the Home Appliance Division of the Murray Corporation of America in Scranton, Pennsylvania. From 1958 until his retirement in 1975, he taught successively at Northwestern University, Evansville (Indiana) University, Georgia State University in Atlanta, Purdue University (Indiana), Mississippi State University, Duquesne University in Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin, and California State University in Fullerton.

He was a member of the American Accounting Association, the American Economic Association, the American Finance Association, the American Institute of Certified Accountants, and Financial Executives Institute, and the Financial Management Association. He became a chartered life underwriter in 1936 and was the author of numerous publications, including The Dow Theory and the Seventy Year Forecast Record in 1969.

He was married in 1934 to Margaret Murphey, who predeceased him, and is survived by a son, Roger P. Whitcomb and a daughter, Julia W. Evans.