W.H. Steel was educated in Mathematics and Physics at the University of Melbourne. He began to work with the Australasian Wireless Association (AWA) and then transferred to the CSIR/O National Standards Laboratory, becoming an international expert in interferometry. He was President of the International Commission for Optics, 1972-75. Steel retired from the CSIRO in 1985, and was an Honorary Professorial Fellow at Macquarie University until his death.

Steel was elected a Fellow of OSA in 1965. In 1985, he received the C.E.K. Mees Medal “In recognition of his contributions to many international organizations, as well as his technical achievements in image diffraction theory, interferometry, and optical design.”