Stephen J. Williams was educated at Carnegie-Mellon, MIT, and Harvard. His professional activities included teaching, research, and academic administration, primarily at the University of Washington and San Diego State University. He is the author of over 100 professional and academic articles and 28 books in the fields of health care management, public health, and demography, as well as a number of mass market books for the general public. In the course of a varied career, he had the opportunity to work with the US Navy both as an employee and as a consultant, during which he was privileged to travel on the USS Sunfish, a nuclear attack submarine, and to experience an arrested landing and catapult takeoff at sea on the USS Abraham Lincoln.