Morris Schnitzer was born in Germany in 1922. In 1947, he immigrated to Montreal, where he earned his bachelors and masters degrees in science at McGill University, going on to earn his PhD in 1955. Morris worked at Agriculture Canada in Ottawa as a principal researcher in the chemistry of organic soil, going on to win the prestigious Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 1995 and writing more than 300 scientific papers over the course of his distinguished career. Morris Schnitzer lives in Ottawa, Ontario.