Philip Vassar Hunter was born in 1883 in Norfolk. He attended Wisbech Grammar School and was later educated at Faraday House, an engineering college in Charing Cross, London. During the First World War he was the Engineering Director in the experiments and research section of the anti-submarine division of the Naval Staff and was awarded the CBE in January 1920. In the Second World War he invented the buoyant cable which contributed to the defeat of the magnetic mine.

He was elected president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1933, becoming an honorary fellow in 1951. He was also president of the British Ice Hockey Association from 1934 to 1958 and was responsible for hiring John F "Bunny" Ahearne in 1934 as the Manager of the Great Britain national ice hockey team which went on to win the gold medal at the 1936 Winter Olympics.

Hunter died on 22 October 1956 at his home in Addington, Surrey.