Harry Schachter

In 1976, Schachter took a position in the Division of Biochemistry Research at the Hospital for Sick Children, which he headed for 13 years. From 1984 to 1989 he also chaired the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto.

At the University of Toronto, Schachter completed his BA in Physiology and Biochemistry in 1955, his MD in 1959, and his PhD in Biochemistry (Gordon Dixon, supervisor) in 1964. Upon completion of his PhD he was appointed an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry. He did his post-doctoral work in glycobiology with Saul Roseman at Johns Hopkins University from 1966 to 1968. He returned to the University of Toronto in 1968, where he established his lab in the Department of Biochemistry.

Harry Schachter FRSC (born 25 February 1933 in Vienna, Austria) is a Canadian biochemist and glycobiologist, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and the Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto, Canada.

Harry Schachter was born in Vienna, Austria in 1933, to Miriam Freund, a businesswoman, and to Ulrich (Usher) Schachter, a dentist and medical doctor. Harry's father was the cousin of Austro-Hungarian and Romanian tenor and actor, Joseph Schmidt. The Schachter family fled the Nazis in 1938, escaping to Port of Spain, Trinidad. He attended secondary school at Saint Mary's College, placing first in Trinidad in the Cambridge Advanced Level Examinations, and winning the Jerningham Gold Medal and the Island Scholarship in Mathematics. He also worked part-time as a reporter for the local Guardian newspaper. His family immigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1951.