Steven N. Austad

Steven N. Austad is Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the inaugural holder of the UAB Protective Life Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging. He is the author of Why We Age: What Science Is Discovering about the Body's Journey through Life and Real People Don't Own Monkeys. Among his many varied jobs before becoming an academic, Austad was a Hollywood lion trainer and a naturalist guide for the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, traveling to Antarctica, the Galapagos, New Guinea, Ethiopia, Siberia, Mongolia, and elsewhere.