Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, and the most recognizable public face of astronomy in the world. He is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where he is also a research associate in the Department of Astrophysics. Born in Manhattan in 1958, he earned his BA in physics from Harvard, his master's in astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin, and his PhD in astrophysics from Columbia University, and his research has ranged across star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of the Milky Way.

Tyson joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist in 1994 and became its director in 1996, overseeing its landmark reconstruction completed in 2000, and in 1997 he founded the museum's Department of Astrophysics. Beyond the museum, he has become the leading popularizer of science of his era: he hosts StarTalk — the science-meets-pop-culture radio show, podcast, and National Geographic television series he launched in 2009 under the banner "Bringing the Universe Down to Earth" — and he hosted the acclaimed Cosmos reboots, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014) and Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020), continuing the series Carl Sagan created in 1980.

He is also one of the best-selling science authors alive. His compact 2017 book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry spent more than a year on the New York Times best-seller list and sold over a million copies, and he has kept publishing steadily since — Cosmic Queries (2021), Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization (2022), To Infinity and Beyond (2023), and, most recently, Take Me to Your Leader (2026), his book on what a first encounter with alien intelligence might mean. His honors include the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the National Academy of Sciences' Public Welfare Medal, an asteroid named 13123 Tyson in his honor, a place on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and appointments by the President of the United States to two federal commissions on space policy.

On stage, Tyson is a phenomenon. Whether he is delivering a keynote on the cosmic perspective, dissecting the science of Hollywood movies, or trading ideas in a live StarTalk-style conversation, he makes the universe feel personal — awe-inspiring, funny, and unforgettable — for audiences from boardrooms to arenas. In 2026 he is touring North America with a run of live shows, including a two-night on-stage conversation with William Shatner, proof that the demand to see him in person has only grown.