LAURENCE STEINBERG, Ph.D., is the Distinguished University Professor and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University. He graduated from Vassar College in 1974 and from Cornell University in 1977, where he received his Ph.D. in human development and family studies. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science and former President of the Society for Research on Adolescence and the Division of Developmental Psychology of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Steinberg has been on the editorial boards of many major journals, including Developmental Psychology and Child Development, where he served as Associate Editor. He chaired the National Academies’ Committee on the Science of Adolescence, and has been a frequent consultant to state and federal agencies and lawmakers on child labor, secondary education, and juvenile justice policy. His work was cited numerous times by the U.S. Supreme Court in its landmark decisions that abolished the juvenile death penalty and mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles.

Dr. Steinberg is one of the most highly cited scholars in the field of developmental psychology. His own research has focused on a range of topics in the study of contemporary adolescence, including parent–adolescent relationships, risk taking and decision making, mental health, adolescent brain development, school-year employment, academic achievement, and juvenile crime and justice. He has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the John P. Hill Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Study of Adolescence, given by the Society for Research on Adolescence; the Society for Adolescent Medicine’s Gallagher Lectureship; and, from the American Psychological Association, the Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society; the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy; and the APA Presidential Citation. In 2009, he was named as the first recipient of the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize for Productive Youth Development.

Dr. Steinberg also has been recognized for excellence in research and teaching by the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, and Temple University, where he was honored in 1994 as one of that university’s Great Teachers. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in adolescence for nearly 40 years and has served as the doctoral advisor to more than 35 students, many of whom have gone on to become influential scholars in their own right in the field of adolescence.

In addition to Adolescence, Dr. Steinberg is the author or co-author of more than 350 scholarly articles on growth and development during the teenage years, as well as the books You and Your Adolescent; When Teenagers Work: The Psychological and Social Costs of Adolescent Employment (with Ellen Greenberger); Crossing Paths: How Your Child’s Adolescence Triggers Your Own Crisis (with Wendy Steinberg); Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do (with B. Bradford Brown and Sanford Dornbusch); The 10 Basic Principles of Good Parenting (which has been published in 10 languages); Rethinking Juvenile Justice (with Elizabeth Scott); and the textbooks Development (with Deborah Lowe Vandell and Marc Bornstein) and Lifespan Development (with Marc Bornstein, Deborah Lowe Vandell, and Karen Rook). He is co-editor of Studying Minority Adolescents: Conceptual, Methodological, and Theoretical Issues (with Vonnie McLoyd) and the Handbook of Adolescent Psychology (with Richard Lerner).