Bill Nye Biography

Quick Facts

NAME: Bill Nye
OCCUPATION: Engineer, Television Personality
BIRTH DATE: November 27, 1955 (Age: 57)
EDUCATION: Sidwell Friends School, Cornell University
PLACE OF BIRTH: Washington, D.C.
AKA: Bill Nye
Full Name: William Sanford Nye
ZODIAC SIGN: Sagittarius

Best Known For

Science educator Bill Nye is best known for hosting Bill Nye, the Science Guy, a PBS Kids show about science.

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Bill Sanford Nye

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In addition to his acting and guest appearances, Nye has written five children's books about science.

Science and Space

When Nye isn't acting, making TV and film appearances, or writing, he is working as a scientist. In the early 2000s, he helped develop sundials that were used in the Mars Exploration Rover missions. From 2005 to 2010, he served as vice president and then as second executive director of The Planetary Society, one of the largest space-interest groups in the world.

Nye became the face of a "Bill Nye's Climate Lab," a permanent exhibition at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California. He is also a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a nonprofit scientific and educational organization that aims to promote scientific inquiry and critical investigation: Nye has said that he is concerned about scientific illiteracy and wants to help teach the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.

In 2012, Nye made headlines after speaking out against the denial of evolution. In a YouTube clip posted online on August 23, 2012, Nye said the denial of evolution in the United States is generally unique to rest of the world's advanced nations. "People still move to the United States, and that's largely became of the intellectual capital we have, the general understanding of science," Nye said in the clip. "When you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in that, it holds everybody back."

While adults are free to deny evolution all they want, Nye continued, children shouldn't be taught to because "we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need ... engineers that can build stuff, solve problems."

Nye is a professor at the Frank H. T. Rhodes Visiting Professorship at Cornell. He holds three honorary doctorate degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Goucher College and Johns Hopkins.