Neil deGrasse Tyson (American English: /dəˈɡræs/, British English, Australian English, New Zealand English, Indian English: /dəˈɡrɑːs/ ; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, planetary scientist, author, and science communicator.
Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose 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.
Books in order of publication:
- Merlin’s Tour of the Universe (1st ed. 1989; 2nd ed. 1998).
- Universe Down to Earth (1994).
- Just Visiting This Planet (1998).
- One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos (2000).
- Cosmic Horizons: Astronomy at the Cutting Edge (2000).
- City of Stars: A New Yorker’s Guide to the Cosmos (2002)
- My Favorite Universe (a 12-part lecture series) (2003).
- Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution (co-authored with Donald Goldsmith) (2004).
- The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist (2004).
- Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007).
- The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet (2009).
- Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier (2012).
- Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour (co-authored with Michael A. Strauss and J. Richard Gott) (2016).
- Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (2017).
- Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military (2018, with Avis Lang).
- Letters from an Astrophysicist (2019).