Steven Soter

Steven Soter is an American astrophysicist and planetary scientist who has been associated with the American Museum of Natural History in New York and has written on astronomy for the public. He is known as a co-writer, with Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, of the television series Cosmos.

In 1988 he joined the Greek archaeologist Dora Katsonopoulou to launch the Helike Project, a search for the Greek city of Helike, destroyed by an earthquake and a surge from the sea in 373 BCE. Bringing a geologist's eye to the ancient texts, the team argued that the city had sunk into an inland lagoon that later silted up, not into the open Gulf of Corinth. Coring and excavation on land found remains of the classical city near Rizomylos in 2001, along with older settlements.

Soter has also written about how earthquakes and tsunamis may underlie ancient stories of divine punishment, including the possibility that Helike's fate shaped Plato's account of Atlantis.