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
We're an elective democracy where science and technology will define where the economically strong countries in the world will be. And science and technological literacy is important for security, as well.
We have people who believe they are scientifically literate but, in fact, are not.
So not enough people in this world, I think, carry a cosmic perspective with them. It could be life-changing.
You will never find people who truly grasp the cosmic perspective such as the entire community of astrophysicists leading nations into battle. No, that doesn't happen. When you have a cosmic perspective, there's this little speck called Earth and you say you're going to do what? You're on this side of a line in the sand and you want to kill people for what?
I'd like - inviting aliens and have them observe what we do because so much of what we do that we take for granted will just be weird or extraordinary or just plain dumb when observed by an alien from another civilization.
Everyone has all different experiences in school. I just know that throughout my life, at no time did any teacher ever point to me and say, hey. He'll go far.
Any astrophysicist does not feel small looking up at the universe; we feel large.
The school system is constructed to praise you if you get high grades. And if you get straight A's, you're the one that everyone puts forward, and they prognosticate that the straight-A person is the one most likely to succeed, because that's the way the school system is constructed and conceived.
I knew my interest in the universe and I owned a telescope that I bought with money I earned by walking dogs. 50 cents per walk, per dog, and that accumulated quickly. I bought a camera, a telescope. I taught myself astrophotography. I did all this.
Exploration is what you do when you don't know what you're doing. That's what scientists do every day. If a scientist already knew what they were doing, they wouldn't be discovering anything, because they already knew what they were doing.
What are we promoting in society? Well-behaved automatons that spew back what they learned in a book. That's not science. You can get a parrot to do that.
Science is a cooperative enterprise spanning the generations. It's the passing of a torch from teacher to student to teacher. A community of minds, reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.
If you seek only easy problems to solve, then ultimately, there'll be nothing about you to distinguish yourself from others.
I am proud to be part of a species where a subset of its members willingly put their lives at risk to push the boundaries of our existence.