Some scientists get the Nobel Prize. A few get to appear on popular TV. Then you have the one who's on "The Daily Show," is an Internet meme and trades lines with Superman in a comic book, all while publishing in prestigious journals and running a renowned planetarium.
You know we must be talking about Neil deGrasse Tyson, the African-American astrophysicist with the uncanny ability to reduce complex cosmic concepts into ideas the average person understands and finds entertaining. No wonder he has such a following among geeks and non-geeks alike.
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Tyson is the Harvard- and Columbia-educated director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Throughout his career, he has taken his knowledge and enthusiasm for astronomy into television series, presentations and books aimed at nonscientists [source: Hayden Planetarium]. And he's also reached some milestones that few other mortals can claim. Let's discuss.