Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist and, since 1996, the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Tyson has written a number of popular books on astronomy. In 1995, he began to write the “Universe” column for “Natural History” magazine. In 2004, he hosted the four-part “Origins” miniseries of PBS’s Nova, and co-authored, with Donald Goldsmith the companion volume for this series, “Origins: Fourteen Billion Years Of Cosmic Evolution.” In 2001, 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. He was soon afterward awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by NASA.
As director of the Hayden Planetarium, Tyson bucked traditional thinking to keep Pluto from being referred to as the ninth planet in exhibits at the center. In 2006 the International Astronomical Union confirmed this assessment by downgrading Pluto to “dwarf planet” classification. Tyson is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Planetary Society, where he was formerly the vice president. He is the new host of the PBS program “NOVA Science NOW.” Tyson is a vocal critic of string theory; his opposition comes from the seeming over-reliance of string theory upon mathematical projections instead of testable variables.
Source - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson
