Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
Trent Stephens graduated in 1966 from Raft River High School, Malta, Idaho. He served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the Great Lakes (Michigan and Indiana; 1967-1969) and then married Kathleen Brown in 1971. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1973 with a BS in Microbiology and a BS in Zoology. He earned an MS in Zoology from BYU in 1974 and a PhD in Anatomy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. He completed a post doc in Pediatrics at the University of Washington in 1981 and took a position teaching Anatomy and Developmental Biology in the Idaho Dental Education Program and Department of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University the same year. He retired in 2011 after teaching at ISU for thirty years. However, he continues to teach Gross Anatomy every year to the dental students and PA students. He was selected as the ISU Distinguished Teacher (1992) and Outstanding Researcher (2000).
His research is the study of normal and abnormal biological form, including birth defects, and has published approximately one hundred papers and books on the subject, including several scholarly works on the relationship between birth defects and medieval beliefs. He has been building toy and model castles for forty years. He has a castle web site buildmodelcastles.com and has been teaching classes about the history of castle construction, life in medieval castles, and the modeling of medieval castles for over twenty years. With his daughter Brittani Hobson, and niece Carrie Reed, he is launching a huge international party website called Frolic Parties.
He has authored or co-authored about twenty books, including several leading-selling Anatomy and Physiology textbooks and the critically acclaimed history of thalidomide, Stephens and Brynner, Dark Remedy: The Impact of Thalidomide and it Revival as a Vital Medicine, Perseus Books, Cambridge, MA, 2001. Trent is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on thalidomide, and has been invited to speak at several international conferences. Beginning in 2012, he has functioned as an expert consultant to several law firms and has helped identify over 200 thalidomide victims (now in their early 50s) in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. He has also coauthored books on the relationship between science and religion: Stephens, Meldrum, and Peterson, Evolution and Mormonism: a Quest for Understanding, Signature Books, SLC, Utah, 2001; Meldrum and Stephens, Who are the Children of Lehi? DNA and the Book of Mormon, Kofford, SLC, Utah, 2007.
Trent is an Eagle Scout and Silver Beaver awardee (1991). He served for many years as Cubmaster and Scoutmaster. He has held many positions in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has a completely lay ministry. He has been an Elders’ Quorum President and has taught Gospel Doctrine, Teacher Development, and Family History courses. He has served as a counselor in a bishopric and as bishop twice. He has served on a High Council and as High Priest Group Leader. He has also been a temple worker in the Idaho Falls Temple. Trent and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of five children and fourteen grandchildren. Their youngest son, Sgt. Blake Christopher Stephens, was killed in Iraq in 2007.
