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
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is one of 50 or 100 billion other galaxies in the universe. And with every step, every window that modern astrophysics has opened to our mind, the person who wants to feel like they're the center of everything ends up shrinking.
I always wanted to be respected for my mind...
The universe is so amazing and so limitless, who wouldn't want to study the universe?
I don't want people to say, 'Something is true because Tyson says it is true.' That's not critical thinking.
No one with a living room radio that was a piece of furniture at the time would say, gee. I want to carry that around on my hip pocket. That was not a thought until NASA initiated this whole exercise. So there's an influence that's not just spinoff.
The miniaturization of electronics, which ultimately was driven by the marketplace, was started by NASA, because it costs money to get something into orbit. So you want to trim your electronics, miniaturize your electronics, miniaturize your satellites.
I don't want to die ... I don't want to die poor. Two great motivators in the history of human cultures.
The last person I ever want working for me is someone who says 'that's not in my job description.
Wow, monitor lizards are pretty gnarly creatures. I want to go with the monitor lizard. That's just weird enough to be true. No?
No one wants to die, and no one wants to die poor. These are the two fundamental truths that transcend culture, they transcend politics, they transcend economic cycles.
If you want a nation to have space exploration ambitions, you've got to send humans.
If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it's not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.
I don't even understand why I have 1.7 million Twitter followers. Every day, I want to remind them and say, "Do you realize I'm an astrophysicist? Do you know what you're doing here?"
Pretty much every plant and animal alive today is the result of eons of natural cross-breeding.