Papers pertain primarily to topics in physics and include notes, overhead transparencies from his lectures, reprints, articles, memos, proposals, correspondence, charts, drawings, notebooks, and audiovisual materials. Subjects include electric dipole moment, diode lasers, and dye lasers; there are some materials pertaining to departmental matters.

Steven Chu, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997, earned his A.B. in mathematics (1970) and his B.S. in physics (1970) at the University of Rochester and his Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley, 1976. He was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories, 1978-1983, and then head of the Quantum Electronics Research Department, AT&T Bell Laboratories, 1983-1987. He joined the faculty at Stanford in 1987, was appointed Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor of Physics and Applied Physics in 1990, and served two terms as Chair of the Physics Department. He left Stanford in 2004 to become director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2009, Chu became the 12th Secretary of Energy and the first person appointed to the US Cabinet after having won a Nobel Prize. In 2013, he returned to Stanford.