Don Patinkin was born January 8, 1922, in Chicago, to a family of Jewish emigrants from Poland.[citation needed] While doing his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago, he also studied the Talmud at the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago. He continued at Chicago for his graduate studies, earning a Ph.D. in 1947 under the supervision of Oskar R. Lange. Patinkin was a strong Zionist and, while doing his graduate studies, planned to immigrate to Palestine; in his graduate research he studied Palestinian economics, although he did not complete his thesis in this subject.