After serving in the U.S. army from 1945-1947, during World War II, Baker began his undergraduate studies at the University of Miami and completed his BA at the University of New Mexico in 1951 [REF].
Baker was employed by the U.S. Army Climatic Research Laboratory, a part of the Quartermaster Corps U.S. in Natick, Massachusetts where he conducted "heat stress research on military personnel at Fort Lee, Virginia (hot-wet) and in the Yuma Desert (hot-dry), and cold stress at Fort Churchill, Canada, on Hudson Bay".