Dr. Strecker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and received his M.D. (1911) from Jefferson Medical College. He interned at St. Agnes Hospital before joining the staff of the Pennsylvania Hospital’s Department of Nervous and Mental Disease (1913) and in 1917, entered the U.S. Army, serving as a Divisional Psychiatrist in France.
In 1924, Dr. Strecker was appointed Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Mental Hygiene at the Yale School of Medicine but returned the following year as Professor of Nervous and Mental Disease at Jefferson. In 1932, he was made Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
Dr. Strecker was a prolific writer and co-authored the Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry, which had eight editions. He wrote several books and published over 200 papers. In 1939, he gave the annual Salmon Lecture at the New York Academy of Medicine and he lectured widely throughout the U.S.
He was a member of numerous psychiatric and other scientific organizations, President of the Association for Research on Nervous and Mental Diseases, a Fellow of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association of Great Britain, and a Consultant to the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army. He received numerous honorary degrees.
Dr. Strecker served as President of the American Psychiatric Association (1943–44).