Steve
Olson

Steve Olson 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 and received the Science-in-Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers. Count Down: Six Kids Vie for Glory at the World’s Toughest Math Competition, was named a best science book of 2004 by Discover magazine. He has been a consultant writer for the National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the Institute for Genomic Research, and many other organizations. 

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.