Steve Olson has been a consultant writer since 1979 for the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, the National Research Council, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other organizations.

He is the author of Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins, which was one of five finalists for the 2002 nonfiction National Book Award, Count Down: Six Kids Vie for Glory at the World’s Toughest Math Competition, and Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens, which was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2016 by Amazon and won the Washington State Book Award.

He also has written for the Atlantic Monthly, Science, Nature, the Smithsonian, Scientific American, Wired, Science 82-86, and many other magazines. From 1989 through 1992 he served as Special Assistant for Communications in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Yale University in 1978.