There aren’t many scientists who are out and out celebrities.
Steven Hawking might qualify but otherwise it’s a pretty short list. And there certainly aren’t many scientists today who would command a performance at the Riverside Theater.
Doctor Neil deGrasse Tyson is that guy. Tyson is an astrophysicist, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the hugely popular host of the relaunched classic TV science series, Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey. That show was originally hosted by another iconic cosmologist, Carl Sagan.
The new series got an endorsement from this influential TV critic, President Obama:
Tyson is funny, outspoken, thoughtful, and passionate about science and the important role it plays in our culture and economy.
"I want to make science something that people can celebrate," he says. "Where they no longer have to think of it as, 'well, that was a class that I took and now I'm going to step around it or over it or dig under it.' You need to recognize that science is everywhere."
Neil Degrasse Tyson will be returning to the Riverside Theatre Wednesday May 11, to talk about science at the movies. He'll give an in-depth analysis of the things that movies got wrong, and the stuff they got right!
