[4] After regular education in Vilna, he emigrated in 1887 at the age of fifteen to the United States, where he would become a U.S. citizen in 1906.

[1] After graduation in 1903, Potter started as a turbine engineer at General Electric in Schenectady, New York.

In 1905 he accepted an appointment at the Kansas State University College of Agriculture as assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Potter served as the thesis advisor of Maurice Zucrow, the first recipient of a PhD degree in engineering from Purdue.

In a 1977 newspaper profile on the occasion of Purdue naming a building in his honor, Potter is quoted saying: Customers, pupils, and associates are attracted to those who by word and deed demonstrate a genuine interest in others.