Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist and science communicator who has been the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City since 1996. He has also written numerous books on astrophysics, including Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007), Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (2017), and Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization (2023). He aims to educate the broader public about the larger universe and the place that humanity holds within it. To that end, he has also hosted several shows for various networks, including Origins, a miniseries broadcast on PBS in the context of the long-running science show NOVA, and a revised and updated version of Carl Sagan’s original Cosmos. Tyson has also appeared (usually, as himself) on popular television shows, such as The Simpsons, The Big Bang Theory, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Tyson often says that meeting Carl Sagan galvanized his desire to reach out to students and the general public as a science communicator. Sagan invited Tyson to Cornell University, where he was teaching, for a tour before Tyson entered college. As Tyson tells it, Sagan was so personable and available that he decided that he wanted to emulate that in his own career.