Trent D. Stephens, PhD, is an emeritus professor of anatomy and embryology at Idaho State University. He holds BS degrees in microbiology and zoology from Brigham Young University, an MS in zoology from BYU, and a PhD in anatomy from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed postdoctoral training in pediatrics at the University of Washington and has been teaching anatomy and embryology at Idaho State University since 1981.
He was selected as the ISU Distinguished Teacher in 1992 and Outstanding Researcher in 2000. He has published more than one hundred scientific papers and books, and is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on the birth defects caused by the drug thalidomide. He has published one textbook (Atlas of Human Embryology) and has coauthored fifteen others about anatomy and physiology. He has also coauthored the books Dark Remedy, the Impact of Thalidomide and its Revival as a Vital Medicine, Evolution and Mormonism: A Quest for Understanding, and Who Are the Children of Lehi? DNA and the Book of Mormon.
Trent has held many leadership positions in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He and his wife, Kathleen, have served for many years as temple workers in the Idaho Falls Temple. They are the parents of five children and fourteen grandchildren. Their youngest son, Sergeant Blake Christopher Stephens, was killed in Iraq in 2007.