Neil deGrasse Tyson (/ˈniːəl dəˈɡræs ˈtaɪsən/; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. He is currently the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space and a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. From 2006 to 2011, he hosted the educational science television show NOVA ScienceNow on PBS and has been a frequent guest on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Real Time with Bill Maher. Since 2009, he has hosted the weekly radio show Star Talk. In 2014, Tyson hosted Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, an update to Carl Sagans Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980) television series Tyson was born as the second of three children in the borough of Manhattan in New York City and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Sunchita Marie (Feliciano) Tyson, was a gerontologist of Puerto Rican descent, and his father, Cyril deGrasse Tyson, an African American, was a sociologist, human resource commissioner for New York City mayor John Lindsay, and the first Director of Harlem Youth Opportunities Kashan Ramahn. From kindergarten through high school Tyson attended public schools in New York City, all in the Bronx, which included PS 36, PS 81, Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy (MS 141), and The Bronx High School of Science (1972–76) where he was captain of the wrestling team, and editor-in-chief of the schools Physical Science Journal. Tyson had an abiding interest in astronomy since he was nine years old, following his visit to Pennsylvania and seeing the stars, saying it looks like the Hayden Planetarium.[ He obsessively studied astronomy in his teens, and eventually even gained some fame in the astronomy community by giving lectures on the subject at the age of fifteen. Tyson recalls that so strong was that imprint [of the night sky] that Im certain that I had no choice in the matter, that in fact, the universe called me. Astronomer Carl Sagan, who was a faculty member at Cornell University, tried to recruit Tyson to Cornell for undergraduate studies
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 22:28:00 +0000
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