Peter Hechtman was a professor at McGill University in the Departments of Biology, Human Genetics, and Pediatrics from 1972 until his retirement in 2001. His area of research interest was in inherited metabolic disorders in children.

Dr. Hechtman was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, N. Y., and attended public schools in that city and New Jersey. He obtained a BSc in biochemistry at McGill University in 1963, a MSc at the University of Minnesota in 1965, a PhD in Investigative Medicine at McGill University in 1970 and a BA in English from Concordia University in 2001. He had additional post-doctoral training at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, N. Y. C. from 1970 to 1972. In the late 50s and early 60s, he participated in the Civil Rights movement, in the early 60s, in the Nuclear Disarmament movement, and from 1980 to 1985 in Alliance Québec.

Dr. Hechtman married Lily Trokenberg in 1965 and has two children, Ken, born in 1967 and Jeremy, born in 1971.