Almanac of Story Tellers: Neil deGrasse Tyson

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of Oct. 5th

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    It is the 278th day of the year, leaving 87 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1958, the astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson was born.

   

    He tells his stories about science and the universe with with and humor, and a determination to inform and entertain people about space and the world around us. He is a preeminent science communicator who regularly writes articles for magazines, newspapers, and websites,  appears on television and radio programs, and has written several books.

    He is the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City.

    His is, perhaps, best known -- or at least has taken the heat for -- "killing" Pluto as a planet. It was not as a purposeful effort to knock Pluto out of the nine known planets in our solar system, but as part of the multi-million dollar renovation at the Hayden.

    What he wanted to do was to reorganize the various bodies in the solar system in a more definitive way -- the terrestrial planets became a group of four (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars). The gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), also became a foursome. Pluto fit into neither of those categories, so it became grouped with similar bodies (Ceres in the asteroid belt, and Eris, Haumea, Makemake, and others in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune), which were later called dwarf planets.

    Tyson good-naturedly took the heat and defended and explained his views.

    He said he was a young boy growing up in the Bronx when Carl Sagan's stories and shows inspired him to become a scientist, educator, and communicator. He attended Harvard University, where he received a bachelor's degree, and later earned his doctorate from Columbia.

    He published his first book in 1989. Merlin's Tour of the Universe was a collection of columns he wrote for StarDate magazine answering questions under the pen name, Merlin. Two other collections were published in 1998, one under the title Just Visiting This Planet. 

    Other titles over the years include The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist (2004), Death by Black Hole (2007, a collection of columns from Natural History magazine), and The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet (2009).

    Tyson still is director of the Hayden Planetarium and lives in New York.