George Alexander Steven was born in 1900. He was educated at Edinburgh University.

During the First World War he served as a driver in an ambulance unit. After the war, he went to Edinburgh University to read Zoology. He spent a short spell teaching at Donaldson's Hospital, Edinburgh, and was then appointed Naturalist at the Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association, Plymouth. He was commissioned as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, 1940, and served in HMS St Wistan, 1940-3, escorting convoys into the Atlantic from Freetown, Sierra Leone. He transferred to the Colonial Office and returned to West Africa to organise fisheries there. After the war, he resumed his work at the Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association, Plymouth. He died in 1958.

His publications include: "Report on the Sea Fisheries of Sierra Leone" (1947) and "Nets: How to Make, Mend and Preserve Them" (1950).