When Neil deGrasse Tyson was a graduate student in astrophysics at Columbia University in 1989, there was an explosion on the sun. The local Fox News affiliate in New York City called his department, looking for an astrophysicist who could comment. Was the earth in peril?
No faculty member was in the office, so the call was forwarded to Tyson, an enterprising young African American who already had published his first book. He explained to the reporter that it was a routine occurrence, the sun does that all the time, there was nothing to worry about, the earth was not in peril.
She must have liked what she got, because she offered to send a limousine to ferry him to the studio so he could give the same answer on camera. This happened, and his bit made the evening news.
Later, watching the evening news n watching a black man (himself) talk about the physics of the sun n it occurred to Tyson that never before had he seen an African American in the media talking about a subject of expertise, other than athletics or entertainment, that had nothing to do with race.
“They never asked me, ‘What does it mean for black people that there is plasma coming at us from the sun?’” he remembered.
From that point on, Tyson knew that it was important for him to be, not only a scientist, but also a public intellectual.
“It was a black person telling the interviewer that the world would be safe from this blob of plasma,” he said. “And I knew we needed more of that.”
The world needed more of that, he said, because of ingrained stereotypes about the intellectual abilities of African Americans.
“It prevents you from generalizing or stereotyping,” he said of the presence of African-American public intellectuals. “The counter-example is too in-your-face.”
The concept of Ralph Ellison’s great novel about African-American identity, Invisible Man, lies behind his argument.
“I knew that visibility was more important than practically anything I could do,” he said.
“I saw that visibility could have a force on the ambitions of people who otherwise might have been disenfranchised of opportunity. I’m trying to get other people’s ambitions going before they even know what ambition is. I’m trying to light that flame deep within.”
Tyson knew from graduate school on that he needed to be a public intellectual. But he had known that he wanted to be an astrophysicist for a very long time before that. At age 11, a friend handed him a pair of binoculars. He looked up, through the lens, and saw the moon.
“It wasn’t just bigger,” he said. “It was better. There were all these textures and valleys.” He saw more than the moon n he saw his future career.
Now he is a renowned astrophysicist who directs the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and has served on presidential commissions regarding the future of the aerospace industry and NASA. He is the author of several books, including most recently Death By Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries, and a familiar face on public television. The boy who looked up at the moon and saw his future is now even the namesake of an asteroid, 13123 Tyson.
Nerd on the block
His parents didn’t push him into science, or anything else. They were veterans of the Civil Rights Movement in New York who took their children as they found them and encouraged what was best in them.
Tyson was a self-described “nerd kid” from childhood on, who could also compete in athletics. At the Bronx High School of Science, a public school, his intellectual interests became suddenly more typical and accepted; he was no longer “the odd one on the block.” He joined the physics club and the wrestling team, in hopes of winning future scholarships n and he began to encounter the limits the larger world wanted to place on a young black man.
“Here is my interest in the universe,” he said, “and now I get to see people who come up with other things they want me to do. I was only encouraged to do things that people in power had seen other black people do.”
Decidedly, that category did not include astrophysics. But, he persevered.
“I have this fuel supply I carry with me,” he said. “Every time I feel a force against me n and they have been countless n I reach down and get some fuel and keep going. I’m too deep into this thing for anything you say to redirect my life’s ambition.”
While Tyson accepts opportunities as a public intellectual n such as hosting NOVA ScienceNOW on PBS or participating in a panel on Monday at the St. Louis Science Center n to be visible as a role model, he dismisses the notion that black youth need specifically black role models in their own fields of endeavor.
“If I was looking for someone who shared my skin color, gender, geography and interests, I would have needed to find a black male astrophysicist from New York City n when there were no black astrophysicists,” he said.
In fact, Tyson said, when he completed his Ph.D. he was the 12th ever African-American astrophysicist. That number has since grown to 35, but he said the number of astrophysicists overall also has tripled, so he remains a rarity in the field.
This means he has had to look for mentors where he could find them, without worrying about a perfect match on every variable. “What I did is assemble my role models a la carte,” he said.
Of course, it was easier for a young black man to identify with scientist mentors who were not black when his own parents were still alive and together and available to him as positive, nurturing examples. He said, “As far as character and how you treat other people, I got that entirely from my parents.”
Tyson also is convinced that the new era of interconnectivity changes the rules for what is possible. He said, “What is changing is the access people have to learn about other people who are successful.”
Tyson insists that the existence of infinite virtual communities changes the rules for the nerd on the block. “If people are not being served by their neighbors in this era,” he said, “you can redefine what is your neighborhood. With blogs, lectures on YouTube n you can create your own community.”
It also helps when the president is a brilliant person who looks like you.
Like most African Americans, Tyson has his own sense of President-elect Barack Obama’s value as a role model. He used the metaphor of an “existence proof” in mathematics: “If he exists and is president, then everything else is possible.”
