Stephen Hopkins Spurr was born in 1918, and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1935. He received his bacehlor's degree in botany from the University of Florida in 1938, and a Master of Forestry degree from Yale University in 1940. A doctorate followed in 1950 after Spurr worked for a time as a researcher in Harvard Forest and produced the book Aerial Photographs in Forestry (1948). After receiving his doctorate, Spurr briefly became a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, but left for the University of Michigan in 1952, publishing Forest Inventory in the same year. In 1960, Spurr revised his first book as Photo Grammetry and Photointerpretation, at one time commonly used as a textbook. Spurr acted as Dean of the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan from 1962 to 1965, later leaving that post to become Dean of the Rackham School of Graduate Studies. During this time, Spurr wrote Forest Ecology (1964). He was also the founder and first editor of the influential journal Forest Science.

Spurr became president of the University of Texas at Austin in 1971, but was forced to resign the post in 1974 following a disagreement with the Board of Regents over the funding of the Humanities Research Center. Spurr had attempted to limit the Center's budget by placing it under the aegis of the General Libraries. Nevertheless, he remained in Austin and worked as a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Spurr's family consisted of his wife Patricia and two children, Daniel and Jean. Stephen H. Spurr died in Austin, Texas on June 20, 1990.