Born in New York City in 1942, Stephen Straker became a landed immigrant in 1972. Before teaching at UBC, Straker obtained his Ph.D. degree in the history of science from Indiana University in 1971: his thesis was entitled Keplers Optics: A Study in the Development of 17th-Century Natural Philosophy. As a professor in the UBC History Department, Straker was regarded as an interdisciplinarian, collectively weaving together strands of history, philosophy, and science. He was a founding member of the Arts One program and the Science and Society Group at UBC, and in 2002, Straker was a recipient of the Killam Teaching Prize. In addition, Straker, along with Edward Levy and Catherine Crawford, became heavily involved in writing a biography about an internationally acclaimed biochemist, Juda Hirsch Quastel, who came to UBC as the first professor of neurochemistry in 1965. Straker died on July 24, 2004.