Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author and inventor, is a man with a
mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people
everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work.
Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing
most of his life. "My family is funny," he says, "I mean funny in the sense
that we make people laugh, not just funny looking." Bill discovered that he had
a talent for tutoring in high school, and while growing up in Washington, DC.
He spent afternoons and summers demystifying math for his fellow students. When
he wasn't hitting the books, Bill was hitting the road on his bicycle. He spent
hours taking it apart to "see how it worked."
Bill's fascination with how things work led him to Cornell University and a
degree in Mechanical Engineering. After graduation, he headed for Seattle and
work as an engineer at Boeing. "There's a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube
on the 747 horizontal stabilizer drive system that I like to think of as my
tube," he says. "I've always loved airplanes and flight. The space program was
very important to me as a kid. I have a photo from the Apollo 11 mission with
the caption, 'Aldrin's visor reflects Armstrong...' Oh yeah, and they're on the
Moon!" exclaims Bill.
It was in Seattle that Bill began to combine his love of science with his flair
for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual
careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night.
Eventually, he quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a
mid-morning-to-late-at-night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle's
home-grown ensemble comedy show "Almost Live." This is where "Bill Nye the
Science Guy®" was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later
on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle's NBC affiliate. With fellow
KING-TV alumni Jim McKenna and Erren Gottlieb, Bill made a number of award
winning shows, including the show he became so well known for, "Bill Nye the
Science Guy." The Science Guy show ran on weekends at first and then later on
PBS five nights a week and in syndication on weekends. In some markets, you
could see the Science Guy seven days a week.
While working on the Science Guy show, Bill won seven national Emmy Awards for
writing, performing, and producing. The show won 28 Emmys in five years. In
between creating the shows, he wrote four kids' books about science. His fifth
book, "Bill Nye's Great Big Book of Tiny Germs" was published in spring 2005.
Bill Nye is the host of two current television series. "The 100 Greatest
Discoveries" airs on the Science Channel. "The Eyes of Nye" is shown on PBS
stations across the country.
Bill was asked to speak at his former professor Carl Sagan's memorial service
and has since moved from being a regular member of the Planetary Society to
becoming a member of the Board of Directors.
In 1998, Bill was invited to a meeting at Cornell concerning the nascent
missions to Mars. He took one look at the "photometric calibration targets,"
and said, "Hey, we've got to make these into sundials!" Bill's dad Ned Nye had
been a prisoner of war and had lived without electricity for nearly four years.
He became fascinated with sundials. When he got back to the US, he married his
college sweetheart, Jacquie Jenkins. She had been recruited by the Navy to work
on secret codes, because she was good at math and science. Ned and Jacquie
fostered Bill's interest in science and Bill caught Ned's love of gnomonics,
sundials. Bill connected the Cornell scientists with Woody Sullivan, a
University of Washington professor and astronomer and sundial expert. Now, we
have the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars both fitted with photometric
calibration MarsDials.
Since then, Bill visits Cornell regularly as a Professor in his own right as
part of the Frank H.T. Rhodes Visiting Professorship.
Bill has also worked extensively to set up and promote the EarthDial Project, a
set of sundials around the world visually reminiscent of the MarsDials and
linked together on the World Wide Web. People everywhere can use the site and
the process of building their own sundials to gain a deep understanding of
geography, astronomy, and our society's complex system of timekeeping.
Bill has two patents on educational products - a magnifier made of water and an
abacus that does arithmetic like a computer. An occasional athlete, Bill has a
patent pending on a device to help people learn to throw a baseball better. His
next patent is an improved toe shoe for ballerinas.
America's favorite stand-up scientist hasn't changed much from that kid growing
up in Washington, DC. He still rides his bike to work. He tutored inner-city
kids in the I Have a Dream program. And he'll still pull out his Periodic Table
of the Elements or his Map of Human Skin Tone from his wallet.
Bill Nye is a graduate of Cornell with a Bachelors of Science degree in
Mechanical Engineering. He holds two Honorary Doctorate degrees from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute and Goucher College.
