Steve grew up in northern Illinois, attended Augustana College where he graduated with a degree in chemistry. Wanting even more science, so he headed for the University of Washington for a master’s degree. He worked at the Illinois Math and Science Academy, and in the research laboratories of Amoco Corporation, before heading to the University of Chicago to earn the Ph.D. Steve returned to Augustana College and spent three years teaching general chemistry before moving to the Geophysical Laboratory, a department of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. His current research concerns the chemistry and physics of the minerals of the Earth’s deep mantle, with the goal of understanding how the mineralogy of the lowermost mantle determines the seismic signature we can measure on a global scale.