Frederic Schiller Lee was born on June 16, 1859 in Canton, N.Y., the son of Rev. John Stebbins and Elmina Bennett Lee. He received his A.B. in 1878 from St. Lawrence University, and his Ph.D. in biology from Johns Hopkins University in 1885 with a dissertation on the subject of arterial tonicity. After studying the electrical phenomena of muscular contraction at Ludwig’s laboratory in Leipzig, Lee taught at St. Lawrence and Bryn Mawr before joining the department of physiology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1891. Soon after arriving at Columbia University he introduced laboratory courses in physiology and opened up the department to graduate students. He became an executive officer of the department of Physiology from 1911 to 1920, after which he became a research professor. During the First World War he also conducted investigations on the subject of industrial fatigue for the U.S. Public Health Service. This work made him a leading international authority on the subject of industrial fatigue. Later he also became one of the founding members of the editorial board of the American Journal of Physiology.