Project Steve - History

History

The project was named in honor of the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002). It began in 2003, with an official press release on February 16, 2003. The press release was issued at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 2003 convention in Denver, Colorado, after a lecture by Lawrence Krauss titled "Scientific Ignorance as a Way of Life: From Science Fiction in Washington to Intelligent Design in the Classroom." Krauss made the actual announcement and directed the reporters to NCSE Director Eugenie Scott, who was sitting in the audience in the front row.

The original goal was to collect the signatures of 100 Steves, but this goal was reached in about 10 days. Both Nobel Prize-winning Steves in science — Steven Weinberg and Steven Chu (who has since been appointed Secretary of Energy in Barack Obama's Cabinet) — were among the first 100 Steves. Over 200 Steves responded in the first month. As the news of Project Steve spread by word-of-mouth, ever-increasing numbers of Steves contacted the NCSE, and the list continued to grow.

Project Steve captured the attention of the media. The first media coverage included articles in the Washington Times, Science, the Oakland Tribune and an interview of NCSE director Eugenie Scott by Australian science journalist and radio broadcaster Robyn Williams for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio show, "The Science Show". "The Science Show" arranged for Geoff Sirmai and David Fisher of the Australian musical comedy team "Comic Roasts" to write the "Steve Song", a parody of the Monty Python song about Spam, for Project Steve. The song had its debut on "The Science Show" episode featuring the interview of Scott which aired on Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio National on the 8th of March, 2003.

Cambridge University Lucasian Professor of Mathematics Stephen Hawking was the 300th Steve to sign the list. By the time the announcement was made on April 21, 2003, another five had joined to bring the total number of Steves to 305. By December 26, 2003, St. Stephen's Day, Project Steve had grown to 400 scientists.

As Project Steve reached the 400 scientist mark, the NCSE decided to offer a commemorative novelty Project Steve t-shirt. The t-shirt is emblazoned with the proclamation, "Over _00 Scientists named Steve Agree, Teach Evolution!" in large letters, where the blank contains the most recent hundreds mark. A list of the current signatories is included in a smaller typeface on the t-shirt as well.

Eugenie Scott, Glenn Branch and Nick Matzke published an article in the July/August 2004 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research (with all the Steves that had signed up to that point listed as co-authors) called The Morphology of Steve which contained "the first scientific analysis of the sex, geographic location, and body size of scientists named Steve". The data were obtained using NCSE's "pioneering experimental steveometry apparatus"—the t-shirt.

Shortly after the second anniversary of Project Steve in February 2005, 543 Steves had signed the list. A front page story in the Ottawa Citizen marking this event was published on February 20, 2005. On September 12, 2005, the 600th Steve signed the list. By February 16, 2006, the third anniversary of Project Steve's official launch, the Steve-o-meter stood at 700. On April 24, 2007, the list had grown to 800 Steves. In early December 2008, the number was approaching 1,000. As of August 9, 2010 there were over 1100 Steves on the list.

There have been articles about Project Steve in The Times, Scientific American, Yale Daily News, Focus on the Family's Family News in Focus, The Guardian, MIT's TechTalk, The Arizona Republic, among many others.