J. Ted Hartman was born in DeRidder, Louisiana, in 1925, and moved to Ames, Iowa, in 1935 where his father accepted a faculty position in the Department of Forestry at Iowa State University. As a high school senior in 1943, he enlisted in the Army and was called to active duty just four weeks after his eighteenth birthday.

After Army training at Camp Roberts, CA, the University of Oregon at Eugene and Camp Cooke, CA, his army unit, the Eleventh Armored Division, was sent to England and then on to Europe. The Eleventh Armored Division entered combat during the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, fought in Luxembourg, across Germany and into Austria as World War II ended.

After discharge from the Army, he graduated from Iowa State University and from Northwestern University Medical School. His training as an orthopaedic surgeon was completed at the University of Michigan. He served a fellowship under Professor Joseph Trueta at Oxford University in England and then joined the orthopaedic surgery faculty at the University of Michigan.

Hartman was later on the orthopaedic surgery staff of the Cleveland Clinic, chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Cook County Hospital in Chicago and on the faculty of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Northwestern University Medical School.

After serving as a consultant to the establishment of a new medical school on the campus of Texas Tech University, he joined the faculty of this new medical school as chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. After ten years in that position, he was named dean of the School of Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.

In 1989, Hartman was named executive director of the Texas Tech MedNet Project. This project provided interactive medical consultations over video between referring doctors in rural communities in Texas and specialists at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. It also provided continuing education programs for medical personnel via satellite. It served as a prototype for many of the telemedicine programs now functioning across the nation.

Hartman retired from all professional activities in June of 1995. He holds the titles of Dean Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.

He and his wife have three children, James Theodore, Jr., Thomas Moore, and Martha Hartman Schutte. They also have four grandchildren.