Age, Biography, and Wiki
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born on October 5, 1958, making him 66 years old as of 2025. He is an American national of African-American and Puerto Rican heritage. His father, Cyril deGrasse Tyson, was a sociologist, human resources commissioner, and director of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, while his mother, Sunchita Maria Feliciano Tyson, worked as a gerontologist for the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Neil grew up in a family with a strong educational background and developed an interest in astronomy at the age of nine. He has siblings named Stephen Joseph Tyson and Lynn Antipas Tyson.
| Occupation | Astrophysicist |
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| Date of Birth | 5 October 1958 |
| Age | 66 Years |
| Birth Place | New York City, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Libra |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Height: 6 feet 2 inches (188 cm)
Weight and Measurements: Not widely reported.
| Height | 6 feet 2 inches |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Neil deGrasse Tyson is married to Ann U. Cooper, a former math teacher. They have two children together, Miranda and Travis.
His African-American father, Cyril deGrasse Tyson (1927–2016), was a sociologist and human resource commissioner for New York City mayor John Lindsay, and the first director of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited. His mother, Sunchita Maria Tyson (née Feliciano; 1928–2023), was a gerontologist for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare and is of Puerto Rican descent. Neil has two siblings: Stephen Joseph Tyson and Lynn Antipas Tyson.
Tyson lives in the Tribeca neighborhood of Lower Manhattan with his wife, Alice Young. They have two children, Miranda and Travis. Neil met his wife in a physics class at the University of Texas at Austin. They married in 1988 and named their first child Miranda after the smallest of Uranus' five major moons. Tyson is a wine enthusiast whose collection was featured in the May 2000 issue of the Wine Spectator and the Spring 2005 issue of The World of Fine Wine.
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| Husband | Alice Young (m. 1988) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Neil deGrasse Tyson's net worth is estimated at around $5 million to $7 million, depending on the source. His primary income sources include his role as the director of the Hayden Planetarium, where he earns approximately $450,000 annually, book royalties, media appearances, and public speaking engagements. His successful books, such as "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry," have contributed significantly to his earnings.
Tyson is an advocate for expanding the operations of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Arguing that "the most powerful agency on the dreams of a nation is currently underfunded to do what it needs to be doing". He has suggested that the general public has a tendency to overestimate how much revenue is allocated to the space agency. At a March 2010 address, referencing the proportion of tax revenue spent on NASA, he stated, "By the way, how much does NASA cost? It's a half a penny on the dollar. Did you know that? The people are saying, 'Why are we spending money up there...' I ask them, 'How much do you think we're spending?' They say 'five cents, ten cents on a dollar.' It's a half a penny."
In a May 2011 StarTalk Radio show, The Political Science of the Daily Show, Tyson said he donates all income earned as a guest speaker. he is a frequent participant in the website Reddit's AMAs (Ask Me Anythings) where he is responsible for three of the top ten most popular AMAs of all time.
Career, Business, and Investments
- Astrophysicist and Educator: Tyson serves as the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium and has been instrumental in modernizing the facility.
- Science Communicator: He is best known for hosting the "Nova ScienceNow" series and the "StarTalk" podcast, making science accessible to a broad audience.
- Author: Tyson has written over 15 books on astrophysics and cosmology, with several becoming bestsellers.
- Media Appearances: His television and media appearances have further amplified his influence as a science communicator.
From 1995 to 2005, Tyson wrote monthly essays in the "Universe" column for Natural History magazine, some of which were later published in his books Death by Black Hole (2007) and Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (2017). During the same period, he wrote a monthly column in StarDate magazine, answering questions about the universe under the pen name "Merlin". Material from the column appeared in his books Merlin's Tour of the Universe (1998) and Just Visiting This Planet (1998). Tyson served on a 2001 government commission on the future of the U.S. aerospace industry and on the 2004 Moon, Mars and Beyond commission. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in the same year. From 2006 to 2011, he hosted the television show NOVA ScienceNow on PBS. Since 2009, Tyson has hosted the weekly podcast StarTalk. A spin-off, also called StarTalk, began airing on National Geographic in 2015. In 2014, he hosted the television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a successor to Carl Sagan's 1980 series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences awarded Tyson the Public Welfare Medal in 2015 for his "extraordinary role in exciting the public about the wonders of science".
Tyson was a lecturer in astronomy at the University of Maryland from 1986 to 1987 and in 1988, he was accepted into the astronomy graduate program at Columbia University, where he earned a Master of Philosophy degree in astrophysics in 1989, and a PhD degree in astrophysics in 1991 under the supervision of Professor R. Michael Rich. Rich obtained funding to support Tyson's doctoral research from NASA and the ARCS Foundation, enabling Tyson to attend international meetings in Italy, Switzerland, Chile, and South Africa and to hire students to help him with data reduction. In the course of his thesis work, he observed using the 0.91 m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, where he obtained images for the Calán/Tololo Supernova Survey helping to further their work in establishing Type Ia supernovae as standard candles.
In 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush appointed Tyson to serve on the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry and in 2004 to serve on the President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy, the latter better known as the "Moon, Mars, and Beyond" commission. Soon afterward, he was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by NASA.
Pigliucci contrasted Tyson with scientist Richard Dawkins: "[Dawkins] really does consider, at this point, himself to be an atheist activist. You very clearly made the point that you are not." Tyson replied: "I completely respect that activity. He's fulfilling a really important role out there." Tyson has spoken about philosophy on numerous occasions. In March 2014, during an episode of The Nerdist Podcast, he said that philosophy is "useless" and that a philosophy major "can really mess you up", which was met with disapproval. Pigliucci, a philosopher, later criticized him for "dismiss[ing] philosophy as a useless enterprise".
In a 2014 interview with Grantland, Tyson said that he related his experience on that 2005 panel in an effort to make the point that the scientific question about genetic differences can not be answered until the social barriers are dismantled. "I'm saying before you even have that conversation, you have to be really sure that access to opportunity has been level." In the same interview, Tyson said that race is not a part of the point he is trying to make in his career or with his life. According to Tyson, "[T]hat then becomes the point of people's understanding of me, rather than the astrophysics. So it's a failed educational step for that to be the case. If you end up being distracted by that and not [getting] the message." He purposefully no longer speaks publicly about race. "I don't give talks on it. I don't even give Black History Month talks. I decline every single one of them. In fact, since 1993, I've declined every interview that has my being black as a premise of the interview."
In May 2013, the Science Laureates of the United States Act of 2013 (H.R. 1891; 113th Congress) was introduced into Congress. Tyson was listed by at least two commentators as a possible nominee for the position of Science Laureate, if the act were to pass. On March 8, 2014, Tyson made a SXSW Interactive keynote presentation at the Austin Convention Center. On June 3, 2014, he co-reviewed Gravity in a CinemaSins episode. He made two more appearances with CinemaSins, co-reviewing Interstellar on September 29, 2015, and The Martian on March 31, 2016.
During November and December 2018, Tyson was accused of rape by a woman while an additional three women alleged inappropriate sexual advances. Tchiya Amet El Maat accused Tyson of drugging and raping her while both were graduate students at UT Austin in 1984. Katelyn Allers, a professor at Bucknell University, alleged Tyson touched her inappropriately at a 2009 American Astronomical Society gathering. Ashley Watson, Tyson's assistant on Cosmos, alleged Tyson made inappropriate sexual advances to her in 2018 which led her to resign from the position days later. In what Tyson described as a Native American handshake, he held her hand and looked her in the eye for 10 seconds. When she left, he told her he wanted to hug her but would rather not in case he wanted more. A fourth anonymous woman alleged Tyson made inappropriate comments to her during a 2010 holiday party at the American Museum of Natural History. Tyson denied El Maat's rape accusation, while corroborating the basic facts around the situation of Allers and Watson's assertions, but claimed his actions were misinterpreted and apologized for any misunderstanding or offense.
Social Network
Neil deGrasse Tyson is active on social media platforms, including Twitter and Instagram, where he engages with his large following by sharing insights into science and current events.
As director of the Hayden Planetarium, Tyson bucked traditional thinking in order to keep Pluto from being referred to as the ninth planet in exhibits at the center. He has explained that he wanted to look at commonalities between objects, grouping the terrestrial planets together, the gas giants together, and Pluto with like objects, and to get away from simply counting the planets. He has stated on The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, and BBC Horizon that the decision has resulted in large amounts of hate mail, much of it from children. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) confirmed this assessment by changing Pluto to the dwarf planet classification.
In 2012, Tyson announced that he would appear in a YouTube series based on his radio show StarTalk. A premiere date for the show has not been announced, but it will be distributed on the Nerdist YouTube Channel. On February 28, 2014, Tyson was a celebrity guest at the White House Student Film Festival.
In his book Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier Tyson argues that large and ambitious space exploration projects, like getting humans to Mars, will probably require some sort of military or economic driver in order to get the appropriate funding from the United States federal government.
In Action Comics #14 (January 2013), which was published November 7, 2012, Tyson appears in the story, in which he determines that Superman's home planet, Krypton, orbited the red dwarf LHS 2520 in the constellation Corvus 27.1 lightyears from Earth. He assisted DC Comics in selecting a real-life star that would be an appropriate parent star to Krypton, and picked Corvus, which is Latin for "Crow", and which is the mascot of Superman's high school, the Smallville Crows. Tyson also had a minor appearance as himself in the 2016 film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Fox, National Geographic, the Museum of Natural History, and the producers of Cosmos announced investigations, which Tyson said that he welcomed. The National Geographic Channel announced on January 3, 2019, that they were putting further episodes of StarTalk on hiatus so as "to allow the investigation to occur unimpeded". The premiere of Cosmos: Possible Worlds, initially scheduled for March 3, 2019, was also delayed while the investigation continued. On March 15, 2019, both National Geographic and Fox announced, "The investigation is complete, and we are moving forward with both StarTalk and Cosmos," and that: "There will be no further comment." The networks affirmed that both StarTalk and Cosmos would resume, but that no date had been set. In July, the American Museum of Natural History said that Neil deGrasse Tyson would keep his job as director of the Hayden Planetarium.
Education
Tyson attended The Bronx High School of Science, graduating in 1976. He then pursued a degree in physics from Harvard University, which he completed in 1980.
By combining his passion for astrophysics with his ability to communicate complex ideas, Neil deGrasse Tyson has become a leading figure in science education and advocacy.
Neil deGrasse Tyson ( or ; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. In 1994, he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist and the Princeton faculty as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. In 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210 million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000. Since 1996, he has been the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.
Tyson grew up in the Castle Hill neighborhood of the Bronx and then in Riverdale. From kindergarten throughout high school, Tyson attended public schools in the Bronx: PS 36 Unionport, PS 81 Robert J. Christen, the Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy (MS 141), and graduated from The Bronx High School of Science in 1976 where he was captain of the wrestling team and editor-in-chief of the Physical Science Journal. His interest in astronomy began at the age of nine after visiting the sky theater of the Hayden Planetarium. He recalled that "so strong was that imprint [of the night sky] that I'm certain that I had no choice in the matter, that in fact, the universe called me." During high school, Tyson attended astronomy courses offered by the Hayden Planetarium, which he called "the most formative period" of his life. He credited Mark Chartrand III, director of the planetarium at the time, as his "first intellectual role model" and his enthusiastic teaching style mixed with humor inspired Tyson to communicate the universe to others the way he did.
When he was 14, he received a scholarship from the Explorers Club of New York to view the June 1973 total solar eclipse aboard the SS Canberra. The scientific cruise carried two thousand scientists, engineers, and enthusiasts, including Neil Armstrong, Scott Carpenter, and Isaac Asimov.
Tyson obsessively studied astronomy in his teen years; he eventually even gained some fame in the astronomy community by giving lectures on the subject at the age of 15. Astronomer Carl Sagan, who was a faculty member at Cornell University, sought to recruit Tyson to Cornell for undergraduate studies. In his book, The Sky Is Not the Limit, Tyson wrote:
Tyson chose to attend Harvard where he majored in physics and lived in Currier House. He was a member of the rowing team during his freshman year, but returned to wrestling, lettering (achieving varsity team rank) in his senior year. He was also active in dance (styles including jazz, ballet, Afro-Caribbean, and Latin Ballroom). Tyson earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics at Harvard College in 1980 and then began his graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin, from which he received a Master of Arts degree in astronomy in 1983. By his own account, he did not spend as much time in the research lab as he should have. His professors encouraged him to consider alternative careers and the committee for his doctoral dissertation was dissolved, ending his pursuit of a doctorate from the University of Texas.
During his thesis research at Columbia University, Tyson became acquainted with Professor David Spergel at Princeton University, who visited Columbia University in the course of collaborating with his thesis advisor on the Galactic bulge typically found in spiral galaxies.
Tyson's research has focused on observations in cosmology, stellar evolution, galactic astronomy, bulges, and stellar formation. He has held numerous positions at institutions including the University of Maryland, Princeton University, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Hayden Planetarium.
In 1994, Tyson joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist while he was a research affiliate in Princeton University. He became acting director of the planetarium in June 1995 and was appointed director in 1996. As director, he oversaw the planetarium's $210 million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000. Upon being asked for his thoughts on becoming director, Tyson said "when I was a kid... there were scientists and educators on the staff at the Hayden Planetarium... who invested their time and energy in my enlightenment... and I've never forgotten that... to end up back there as its director, I feel this deep sense of duty, that I serve in the same capacity for people who come through the facility today, that others served for me".
Tyson has written a number of popular books on astrophysics. In 1995, he began to write the "Universe" column for Natural History magazine. In a column Tyson wrote for a special edition of the magazine, called "City of Stars", in 2002, he popularized the term "Manhattanhenge" to describe the two days annually on which the evening sun aligns with the street grid in Manhattan, making the sunset visible along unobstructed side streets. He had coined the term in 1996, inspired by how the phenomenon recalls the sun's solstice alignment with the Stonehenge monument in England. Tyson's column also influenced his work as a professor with The Great Courses.
In April 2011, Tyson was the keynote speaker at the 93rd International Convention of the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society of the Two-year School. He and James Randi delivered a lecture entitled Skepticism, which related directly with the convention's theme of The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril, and Promise.
When asked during a question session at the University at Buffalo if he believed in a higher power, Tyson responded: "Every account of a higher power that I've seen described, of all religions that I've seen, include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence." In an interview with Big Think, he said: "So, what people are really after is what is my stance on religion or spirituality or God, and I would say if I find a word that came closest, it would be 'agnostic'... at the end of the day I'd rather not be any category at all." Additionally, in the same interview with Big Think, Tyson mentioned that he edited Wikipedia's entry on him to include the fact that he is an agnostic:
In 2018, Tyson made a second guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory as himself, together with fellow television personality Bill Nye, in the first episode of the show's final season ("The Conjugal Configuration"). He also had guest appearances in Gravity Falls, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Zoolander 2, Ice Age: Collision Course, Family Guy, BoJack Horseman, The Simpsons, Salvation and Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?.
