Knut Ove Æsøy grew up in Florø, a small town with about 10,000 inhabitants in the far west of Norway. The town provided closeness to nature and especially the sea, and much of his upbringing was about fishing and farming in addition to school and sports. He began working in industry at an early age before choosing an academic career. He has a doctorate in philosophy of science and currently works at OsloMet and the education of Norway's future teachers.

Steven received dual bachelors’ degrees in physics and philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. He subsequently worked for 13 years at the Bahá’í World Center in Haifa, Israel in its Research Department, where he coordinated the indexing and collation of the Bahá’í Sacred Writings and their translation from Persian and Arabic into English. During that period, he concurrently held an academic appointment in the Physics Department at the Technion University in Haifa and published original research on the masses of nearby galaxies. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon with his wife and three daughters. He loves armchair philosophizing and the great outdoors."