Peter Hacker notes that he was "the most skillful developer of Rylean ... ideas in philosophical psychology" and that "if anyone surpassed Austin in subtlety and refinement in the discrimination of grammatical differences, it was White.

[5] Following their parents' separation in the early 1930s, both brothers moved with their Catholic mother when she returned to her hometown of Cork (where she would work in the drapery trade).

[9] Also through this time, which coincided with "The Emergency" of World War II, White served with the Local Defence Force in the 42nd Dublin Rifle Battalion.

[10][11] After graduation he remained at Trinity for a year to pursue further studies in classics and serve as a deputy lecturer in logic.

[11] In 1946 White was appointed as an assistant lecturer in the department of philosophy and psychology at the (then) University College of Hull,[12] the departmental staff initially consisting solely of himself and Professor T. E.

[5] White obtained this position on the recommendation of Luce[8][13] who had contributed the "Inventory of the Manuscript Remains" to Jessop's A Bibliography of George Berkeley (1934).

[16] And Westby himself records White's "invaluable co-operation" in initiating and running the three-year "Philosophical Problems of the Sciences" course.

[26] In the last decade of his life, as Hacker notes, White worked on jurisprudential problems pertaining to action, intention, voluntariness, negligence and recklessness.