Bill Yates studied cartooning through the W.L. Evans Correspondece Course. During the War, he worked in the Navy training fighter pilots. After the War, he studied journalism at the University of Texas, and he became editor of the campus humour magazine. Yates moved to New York in 1950, where he began drawing magazine panels and editing cartoon magazines. In 1960, he created the daily 'Professor Phumble' comic, about an absent-minded professor. King Features distributed this strip until 1978. At the same time, Yates worked as an illustrator, cartoonist writer for other artists and advertising artist.
