Neil deGrasse Tyson Named Science Communicator of the Year

Friday, January 15 2:59 pm

Neil Tyson chats with visiting school children in the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History Credit: AMNH

The Hayden Planetarium’s director, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, is now EarthSky’s Science Communicator of the Year.

In a recent interview, Dr. Tyson focuses on the importance of scientific literacy and education. “Kids are born scientists,” he says. “They’re born probing the natural world that surrounds them. They’ll lift up a rock. They’ll pick up a bug. They’ll pull petals off a flower. They’ll ask you why the grass is green and the sky is blue, and they’ll experiment with breakable things in your house. It might mean they break a dish someday, because they’re experimenting with how dishes roll down the corridor. But they’ll learn something about how fragile something as brittle as glass can be.”

“There’s a lesson there,” he continues. “Yeah, you’ll break a dish. So you buy a new dish. And you say, ‘Well, that can be costly.’ But, as Derek Bok, who was president of Harvard, once said, ‘If you think education is costly, look at the cost of ignorance.’”

EarthSky began presenting Science Communicator of the Year awards in 2008. Dr. Tyson is the second recipient and was selected by an advisory committee of more than 600 scientists.