Steven G. Krantz was born in San Francisco, California and grew up in Redwood City, California. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz and the Ph.D. from Princeton University. Krantz has held faculty positions at UCLA, Princeton University, Penn State University, and Washington University in St. Louis. He is currently Deputy Director of the American Institute of Mathematics. He has written 160 scholarly papers, over 50 books and is the holder of the Chauvenet Prize and the Beckenbach Book Award.