Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Written by: Emily Vargo
Today we learn about someone who is a hero of mine. He is someone who I admire and look up to. When I write these articles, I usually don’t put my emotional input into them, but this is an exception.
On October 5, 2021, our personal Astrophyicsist was born. This scientist’s name is Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
For some, when they hear scientist, they think of a brilliant person who had straight A’s, did amazing in school, and academics came naturally to them. However, with Dr. Tyson, this wasn’t the case. Neil was born in Manhatten, New York, and went to public school in the Bronx.
Neil was quite bored in school, and his grades were not great. He often acted out in classes, and many of his teachers saw no future for him.
When he was nine, the teacher noticed that Tyson loved science. She suggested to him that he should visit the sky theater of the Hyden Planetarium. Neil visited the planetarium, and ever since that visit, he felt that the Universe called him and that this was his purpose.
Fast forward to Tyson’s teen years when he started teaching classes at the planetarium. He started gaining a small fan base and caught the attention of Astronomer Carl Segan. Segan was a faculty member at Cornell University and tried to recruit Neil to their undergraduate program.
Tyson ended up going to Harvard instead for an undergraduate degree. Something that not many people know about Tyson is that he was a wrestler. He wrestled in high school and college.
After graduating from Havard University, Tyson received his Masters from the University of Texas at Austin and then his Doctorate from Columbia University. Tyson has focused on cosmology, stellar evolution, galactic astronomy, bulges, and stellar formations. Besides holding numerous positions at institutions across the United States, Tyson has written several popular books about astronomy.
Tyson has also hosted several science tv shows and has his radio talk show called Star Talk. Besides being known for his books, and tv shows, Tyson is also known for being one of the scientists that demoted the beloved planet, Pluto, to Dwarf planet.
There is so much that Dr. Tyson has accomplished that it is too long to list in this article. He has also received several awards for his achievements. To end today’s article, we read one of Dr. Tyson’s beloved quotes.
“I look up at the night sky, and I know that yes, we are part of this universe, we are in the universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us.”
