During World War II, he served as a physician in the United States Army in Japan.

Yet, he spent the majority of his career as a psychiatrist and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania.

He died on July 12, 2014, in his Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, home from pneumonia.

[6][7] His work in 1959 is regarded as the beginning of pessimism about long-term weight management.

[8] There is a chair professorship at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania named for Stunkard.