Halbert L. White, Jr. – Chancellor’s Associates Distinguished Professor of Economics in the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, San Diego and cofounder of Bates White Economic Consulting – died March 31, 2012, following a four-year battle with cancer. He was 61.
One of the world’s leading economists, White began teaching at UC San Diego in 1979.
Widely recognized for his work in econometrics and the mathematics of neural networks, White is perhaps best known for developing a standard errors test, on the basis of which Thomson Reuters predicted in 2011 that White was a contender for the Nobel Prize.
White’s test grew out of what are known as “White standard errors.” These are also sometimes called “robust standard errors” or “heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors.” White’s innovation was to develop a way to check whether the built-in assumptions in an economic model are correct as well as procedures that are robust even when the assumptions are wrong.
White’s funeral will be private. Plans are pending for public memorial tributes in Washington, D.C. and at UC San Diego.

几乎每一个做计量经济分析的都经常采用怀特标准误（"White standard errors", or "robust standard errors", or "heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors”)。

我曾经有幸聆听了White给博士生和硕士生讲的“高等计量经济学”和给本科生讲的“Excel在计量经济分析中的应用”两门课程。印象最深的是在“高等计量经济学”的第一次授课中，全班（大约二十七八人）每一个人都介绍自己毕业于哪里？什么专业？等。一周以后，再次上课时，大家的座位与上周完全不一样了，但White把每一位同学毕业的学校、来自哪个国家毫无差错地复述了一遍。记忆力惊人！