His family emigrated in 1940 to Quito, Ecuador, where he was raised and educated until moving to the United States for graduate school.
He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark until 1958, studying Salmonella and Escherichia coli growth.
During his tenure at Tufts, Schaechter spent 23 years serving as chair of the Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, became a Distinguished Professor in 1987, and received the medical students' teaching award 11 times.
[5] Schaechter has also been involved with public outreach and science communication projects; he co-edits an ASM-sponsored microbiology-themed blog called Small Things Considered[6] and co-hosts the This Week in Microbiology podcast founded and hosted by Vincent Racaniello.
Among the notable discoveries of the group was the association of the E. coli origin of replication with the cell membrane when hemimethylated.