Steven Chu is an American physicist and former government official. He is a Nobel laureate and was the 12th U.S. secretary of energy. He is currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. He is known for his research at the University of California, Berkeley, and his research at Bell Laboratories and Stanford University regarding the cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, for which he shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips.

The United States secretary of energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the Cabinet of the United States, and fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. The position was created on October 1, 1977, when President Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Energy Organization Act, establishing the department. The energy secretary and the department originally focused on energy production and regulation. The emphasis soon shifted to developing technology for better and more efficient energy sources, as well as energy education. After the end of the Cold War, the department's attention also turned toward radioactive waste disposal and the maintenance of environmental quality. Former secretary of defense James Schlesinger served as the first secretary of energy. As a Republican nominated to the post by Democratic president Jimmy Carter, Schlesinger's appointment marks the only time a president has chosen a member of another political party for the position. Schlesinger is also the only secretary to be dismissed from the post. Hazel O'Leary, Bill Clinton's first secretary of energy, was the first female and first African American to hold the position. The first Hispanic to serve as Energy Secretary was Clinton's second energy secretary, Federico Peña. Spencer Abraham became the first Arab American to hold the position on January 20, 2001, serving under the administration of George W. Bush. Steven Chu became the first Asian American to hold the position on January 20, 2009, serving under president Barack Obama. Chu was also the longest-serving secretary of energy and the first individual to join the Cabinet after having received a Nobel Prize.