Steven S. Zumdahl received his B.S. (with Honors) from Wheaton College (Illinois) in 1964 and was awarded a Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1968 from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He was a faculty member at the University of Colorado in Boulder from 1968-1974. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at UIUC from 1974-1976 and then was an instructor at Parkland College (Champaign) until 1978. He returned to the University of Illinois in 1978 where he served as a Professor, the Associate Head of Chemistry and then as the Director of General Chemistry until his retirement in 2003.