Steven Boxer earned a BS with Honors in Chemistry from Tufts University, USA, in 1969 and a PhD in Physical and Physical-Organic Chemistry from the University of Chicago, USA, in 1976. Since then, he has held various positions at Stanford University, USA, and since 2016 has been Camille Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry, becoming chair of the department in 2020.

He has served on the scientific advisory board of many start-ups in the general area of biotechnology and as an advisor to government, university, and non-profit organizations in the US and around the world. He is the recipient of several awards, including recently the Founders Award from the Biophysical Society, and is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Biophysical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. 

In 2024, he received the Ellis R. Lippincott Award, “For his development of vibrational Stark spectroscopy as a revolutionary tool to understand molecular interactions at the fundamental level, and for its application in enzyme catalysis to answer the century-old question of how enzymes work.”