Background

Andrew Steptoe was born on April 24, 1951at St. George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, London, United Kingdom. He is a son of Patrick Steptoe, the obstetrician and gynaecologist.

Education

Steptoe studied at Uppingham School. In 1972, he graduated from Gonville and Caius College with a First Class degree in Natural Sciences. Steptoe received his doctor's degree on biofeedback and cardiovascular disease from Magdalen College four years later.

Steptoe became an honorary Doctor of Science of London University in 1995.

Career

Steptoe's career began in 1977 when he was appointed as a lecturer to the Department of Psychology at St. George’s Hospital Medical School, located at the University of London. His work there lasted for twenty-two years. Steptoe raise to senior lecturer in 1981 and to Reader in 1987, he was appointed as a professor and head of the department in 1988.

In addition, Steptoe worked as a project leader of a Concerted Action on Breakdown in Human Adaptation by the Commission of the European Communities. Steptoe was a chair of the scientific program committee for the first International Congress of Behavioral Medicine in Uppsala, Sweden. He was also involved in the professional development of health psychology in the United Kingdom. Steptoe became a founding editor of the British Journal of Health Psychology. He was also an associate editor of such periodicals as the Psychophysiology, the Journal of Psychophysiology, the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, the British Journal of Clinical Psychology and the International Journal of Rehabilitation and Health.

From 2000 to 2016, Steptoe held the position of a British Heart Foundation professor of psychology at the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London (UCL). He became the head of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health of UCL in 2010, rising to a director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care at UCL the next year, Steptoe held the position till 2017. Currently, he is a programme director of the Health Psychology MSc at UCL. He is a specialist in psychological and social factors in health, in age-related ill-health and in understanding the interface between behaviour and the biological processes involved in disease. In addition, Steptoe is a principal investigator of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a longitudinal study that collects multidisciplinary data from a representative sample of the English population aged 50 and older.

Nowadays Steptoe serves as an associate editor of Aging and Mechanisms of Disease, as well as a section editor of Current Cardiology Reports. He has edited fourteen other international journals.

Steptoe has penned and edited several books on the way human psychology interacts with physical health. These titles include Psychological Factors in Cardiovascular Disorders, Health Care and Human Behavior, which he edited with Andrew Mathews, and Psychosocial Processes and Health, which he co-compiled and edited with Jane Wardle. Steptoe is also responsible for a more widely-reviewed volume on a different subject-opera. His The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background to Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte was published in 1988.

Steptoe’s first book, however, was 1981’s Psychological Factors in Cardiovascular Disorders. In this volume the author discusses not only the ways in which psychological factors such as stress and personality type can help bring on cardiovascular problems, especially ischemic heart disease and hypertension, but he also provides suggestions for psychological methods which might help treat victims of heart-related disease. As the title states, Steptoe’s The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas treats the operas created in collaboration between renowned eighteenth-century Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Italian libretticist Lorenzo Da Ponte.

Achievements

• Steptoe has made significant contributions to several aspects of health psychology and behavioural medicine, he also contributed to cultural and musical studies.
  
  Steptoe won the Contributions in Positive Health Award from the International Positive Psychology Association in 2011. He received the Patricia Barchas Award for Sociophysiology from the American Psychosomatic Society six years later.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Genius and the Mind

    (With historical studies of some of the most famous creati...)

    1998
  • The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas

    (This book provides illuminating insights into Mozart's cr...)

    1988
  • Mozart 1997
  • Psychological Factors in Cardiovascular Disorders 1981

Membership

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  He is a fellow of the organisation.

  Academy of Medical Sciences , United Kingdom

  2007

• 

  Steptoe is a member of the society.

  Academia Europaea , United Kingdom

  2003

• 

  He is a fellow of the academy.

  Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research , United Kingdom

  2010

• 

  He became a fellow of the society.

  Gerontological Society of America , United States

  2014

Connections

Father:

Patrick Steptoe

His father was a British obstetrician and gynaecologist and a pioneer of fertility treatment.