Not the guy in those Dos Equis commercials. The most interesting man in the world is Neil deGrasse Tyson, the coolest astrophysicist ever (no offense to Brian Cox
or Stephen Hawking). As described on the NC Science
Festival listing of his
event, he's the current director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose
Center for Earth and Space, as well as a research associate at the American
Museum of Natural History. He's currently working on the sequel to Carl Sagan’s award-winning
television series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The reason that I really respect and idolize him is that he is both a great researcher and a great communicator, spending much of his time trying to improve science literacy in the US.
Last week I had the great fortune to spend "An Evening with Neil
deGrasse Tyson", which was the name of his talk that he gave at UNC Chapel Hill during the NC Science Festival. He spoke about "Ten
Things that Everyone Should Know About the Universe". Upon arriving
at the venue, I picked up a copy of his new book, "Space Chronicles:
Facing the Ultimate Frontier, " in the vain hopes that we'd have time to stay for
the book-signing at the end. We found our seats and waited patiently for Neil to come out on stage
(I feel like I know him well enough to refer to him on a first-name basis) .
After an introduction by a local weather guy (unfortunately not the weather
guy that I actually went to school with), it was time for the main event.
To the strains of "Glad You Came" by The Wanted, Neil came out on
stage, throwing a couple dance moves into the mix.
Side note: The chorus of this song is unbelieveably apropos. (I wonder if they had to pay to use it?):
"The sun goes down
The stars come out
And all that counts
Is here and now
My universe will never be the same
I'm glad you came."
Neil deGrase Tyson's ability to feel completely comfortable on stage was clear from the
moment that he kicked off his shoes and left them next to the podium while he
wandered the stage giving his talk. He started the talk with a list of
everything he would not discuss, from the content of his books (even though that's why he's giving talks) to his
views on education, but he left the door open for those topics in the Q&A.
Over the next hour, he covered a range of topics, including #10, "The
universe has a shipload of stars" through #6, "Earth is trying to kill
you". Early in the talk, he struggled to get his Mac to work, the only
thing that kept the talk from being perfect (the use of the Mac, not the
trouble he had with it). His engaging style kept the audience glued to his every move for the hour or more that he spoke. He ended on the extremely poetic--and factually correct statement-- for #1, "We
are stardust".
After this amazing talk, he opened the floor for questions--and kept taking them long after he was told by the organizers to stop. The audience clearly knew their speaker, for many of the questions focused on science education and the American educational system in general, a subject about which Neil has strong opinions.
In response to a question about how to fix the US educational system, his answer began with a question that he felt only 3 or 4 people in the
audience would be able to answer in the positive. He first asked how many people in the
audience had one teacher in their educational process who was massively influential in how
they got to where they are today, to which a number of people raised their hands.
As he upped the numbers through two to three to four, the number of hands
dwindled. He randomly picked out some of those people and asked,
half-seriously, "Did you grow up in America?" By the time he
got to six, only a few hands were still up. (Surprisingly enough, given my husband's views on education, his hand was one of the ones still in the air.) He pointed out that, to fix the educational
system, we needed for everyone in the room to be able to answer that question.
The last question of the night came from a young girl. After finding
out her name and her age/grade (9 years old in 3rd grade), he waxed
poetic
about how he decided when he was 11 that he wanted to be an
astrophysicist. He then asked her what she wanted to be when she grew
up. The answer couldn't have been better: "An
astrophysicist." This response literally bowled him over as he
rocked back onto his back like a flipped turtle. But Neil has to know how influential he is to these students, that he might be the one teacher they remember in their education. Even though (or perhaps because) he's not part of the formal schooling system, he can have a huge impact on many, many students and can make a huge impact on the career aspirations and general understanding of science. This understanding is the reason why I know that mentoring and outreach are so important.
But the answer that resonated with me most deeply came in response to a question
asked by another young girl about why, when she looked up the constellation Draco,
some resources told her it had nine stars while other said it had 44. Neil
shared his view that the problem was with the way the question was set up, that
by asking her to indicate the number of stars, it made her miss the big
picture, that people get hung up on how many planets there are and are
astonished when the number drops from 9 to 8. (Neil is well-known for his
campaign to demote Pluto from being a planet.) In this response, he made
the following statement, which is where I will leave this summary:
"The problem is most of education is telling you what to think, not how
to think."
