Neil deGrasse Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tysonis an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth5 October 1958
CountryUnited States of America
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Private enterprise in the history of civilization has never led large, expensive, dangerous projects with unknown risks. That has never happened because when you combine all these factors, you cannot create a capital market valuation of that activity.
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People credit me for making the universe interesting when in fact the universe is inherently interesting, and I'm merely revealing that fact. I don't think I'm anything special for this to happen.
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I want to know what dark matter and dark energy are comprised of. They remain a mystery, a complete mystery. No one is any closer to solving the problem than when these two things were discovered.
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We have bred multiple generations of people who have not experienced knowing where you are the moment a news story broke, with that news story being great and grand and something that elevates society instead of diminishes it.
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People who are scientists today are scientists in spite of the system, typically, not because of it.
Many academicians don't even own a television, much less watch one.
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The humblest person in this world is the astrophysicist. Because we are face to face with our ignorance every single day.
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My parents didn't know much science; in fact, they didn't know science at all. But they could recognize a science book when they saw it, and they spent a lot of time at bookstores, combing the remainder tables for science books to buy for me. I had one of the biggest libraries of any kid in school, built on books that cost 50 cents or a dollar.
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For most of human civilization, the pace of innovation has been so slow that a generation might pass before a discovery would influence your life, culture or the conduct of nations.
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It may be that our cosmic curiosity... is a genetically-encoded force that we illuminate when we look up and wonder.
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Most religious people in America fully embrace science. So the argument that religion has some issue with science applies to a small fraction of those who declare that they are religious. They just happen to be a very vocal fraction, so you got the impression that there are more of them than there actually is.
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Science is an enterprise that should be cherished as an activity of the free human mind. Because it transforms who we are, how we live, and it gives us an understanding of our place in the universe.
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We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!'
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I claim that space is part of our culture. You've heard complaints that nobody knows the names of the astronauts, that nobody gets excited about launches, that nobody cares anymore except people in the industry. I don't believe that for a minute.