Bill Nye
William Sanford Nye is an American science communicator, television presenter, and former mechanical engineer. He is best known as the host of the science education television show Bill Nye the Science Guy and as a science educator in pop culture. Born in Washington, D.C., Nye began his career as a mechanical engineer for Boeing in Seattle, where he invented a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube used on 747 airplanes. In 1986, he left Boeing to pursue comedy, writing and performing for the local sketch television show Almost Live!, where he regularly conducted wacky scientific experiments.
Aspiring to become the next Mr. Wizard, Nye successfully pitched the children's television program Bill Nye the Science Guy to Seattle's public television station, KCTS-TV. The show—which proudly proclaimed in its theme song that "science rules!"—ran from 1993 to 1998 in national TV syndication. Known for its "high-energy presentation and MTV-paced segments", the program became a hit among kids and adults, was critically acclaimed, and was nominated for 23 Emmy Awards, winning 19, including Outstanding Performer in Children's Programming for Nye himself.
Nye continued to advocate for science, becoming the CEO of The Planetary Society. He has written two bestselling books on science: Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation and Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World. He has appeared frequently on other TV shows, including Dancing with the Stars, The Big Bang Theory, and Inside Amy Schumer. He starred in a documentary about his life and science advocacy, Bill Nye: Science Guy, which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2017; and, in October 2017, was named a NYT Critic's Pick. In 2017, the Netflix series Bill Nye Saves the World debuted, and ran for three seasons until 2018. His most recent series, The End Is Nye, premiered August 25, 2022, on Peacock and Syfy.
Early life and education
Nye was born November 27, 1955, in Washington, D.C., to Jacqueline Jenkins, who was a codebreaker during World War II, and Edwin Darby "Ned" Nye, who also served in World War II and worked as a contractor building an airstrip on Wake Island. He is related to William Foster Nye, founder of Nye Lubricants in New Bedford, Massachusetts.Ned was captured and spent four years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp; living without electricity or watches, he learned how to tell time using the shadow of a shovel handle, spurring his passion for sundials. Jenkins-Nye was among a small elite group of young women known as "Goucher Girls", alumnae of Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, whom the Navy enlisted to help crack codes used by Japan and Germany. "She wasn't Rosie the Riveter; she was Rosie the Top-Secret Code Breaker", Nye recalls. "People would ask her what she did during World War II and she'd say, 'I can't talk about it, ha ha ha!
Nye attended Lafayette Elementary School and Alice Deal Middle School before attending Sidwell Friends School for high school on a scholarship, graduating in 1973.
After graduating from Sidwell Friends, he attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he studied at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. His enthusiasm for science deepened after he took an astronomy class with Carl Sagan at Cornell.
In 1977, Nye graduated from Cornell University with a BS in mechanical engineering.
Career
After graduating from Cornell, Nye worked as an engineer for the Boeing Corporation and Sundstrand Data Control near Seattle. At Boeing, he invented a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube used on Boeing 747 airplanes. He applied four times, unsuccessfully, for NASA's astronaut training program.Comedy
Nye started doing standup comedy after winning a Steve Martin lookalike contest in 1978. Nye's friends asked him to do Steve Martin impressions at parties, and he discovered how much he enjoyed making people laugh. He began moonlighting as a comedian while working at Boeing. He has stated, "At this point in our story, I was working on business jet navigation systems, laser gyroscope systems during the day, and I'd take a nap and go do stand-up comedy by night." He also participated in Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and volunteered at the Pacific Science Center on weekends as a "Science Explainer".Nye quit his job at Boeing on October 3, 1986, to focus on his burgeoning comedy career. During Nye's 10-year college reunion in 1987, he went to great lengths to meet with Carl Sagan at Cornell. Sagan's assistant told Nye, "Okay, you can talk to him for five minutes." In their meeting at the space sciences building, Nye explained that he was interested in developing a science television program. "I mentioned how I planned to talk about bridges and bicycles and so on—stuff that, as an engineer, I'd been interested in—and said, 'Focus on pure science. Kids resonate to pure science rather than technology.' And that turned out to be great advice."
Television
In 1986, Nye worked as a writer/actor on a local sketch comedy television show in Seattle called Almost Live! He first got his big break on the show from John Keister who met him during an open mic night. After a guest canceled, cohost Ross Shafer told Nye he had seven minutes of programming to fill. "Why don't you do that science stuff?" Shafer suggested. Nye entertained audiences with comical demonstrations, including what happened when you ate a marshmallow that had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. His other main recurring role on Almost Live! was as Speed Walker, a speedwalking Seattle superhero "who fights crime while maintaining strict adherence to the regulations of the international speedwalking association."A famous incident on the show led to Nye's stage name. He corrected Keister on his pronunciation of the word "gigawatt", and Keister responded, "Who do you think you are—Bill Nye the Science Guy?" Nye's science experiments resonated with viewers, and the local chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded him a talent Emmy for one of his segments. He later hosted a weekly radio show on KJR in 1988 that answered listener questions about science topics.
Even though Nye was a regular on Almost Live!, he was only doing freelance work for the program. While looking for more TV gigs, he got the opportunity in 1989 to host Fabulous Wetlands, a short educational show about Washington's wetlands, sponsored by the Washington State Department of Ecology. On Fabulous Wetlands, Nye explained the importance of preserving estuaries, and the hazards of pollution. The show was, in many ways, a model for Nye's later show, with "zany camera cuts paired with Nye's humor" that set it apart from other scientific broadcasts. Nye soon got more offers to appear on nationally broadcast programs, including eight segments of the Disney Channel's All-New Mickey Mouse Club. Following his stint on Almost Live!, from 1991 to 1993 Nye appeared on live-action educational segments of Back to the Future: The Animated Series, assisting Dr. Emmett Brown. He was a member of the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board from 1992 to 1994.
''Bill Nye the Science Guy''
In 1993, collaborating with James McKenna, Erren Gottlieb and Elizabeth Brock, Nye developed a pilot for a new show, Bill Nye the Science Guy, for the Seattle public broadcasting station KCTS-TV. They pitched the show as "Mr. Wizard meets Pee-wee's Playhouse". Nye obtained underwriting for the show from the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy. The program became part of a package of syndicated series that local stations could schedule to fulfill Children's Television Act requirements. Because of this, Bill Nye the Science Guy became the first program to run concurrently on public and commercial stations. The series was produced by Walt Disney Television and Rabbit Ears Productions, and distributed by Disney.Bill Nye the Science Guy ran from 1993 to 1998, and was one of the most-watched educational TV shows in the United States. While portraying "The Science Guy", Nye wore a powder blue lab coat and a bow tie. Nye Labs, the production offices and set where the show was recorded, was in a converted clothing warehouse in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood. Although it focused on younger viewers, it also attracted a significant adult audience. Its ability to make science entertaining and accessible made it a popular teaching tool in classrooms. With its quirky humor and rapid-fire MTV-style pacing, the show won critical acclaim and was nominated for 23 Emmy Awards, winning nineteen. Research studies found that regular viewers were better at explaining scientific ideas than non-viewers.
In addition to the TV show, Nye published several books as The Science Guy. A CD-ROM based on the series, titled Bill Nye the Science Guy: Stop the Rock!, was released in 1996 for Windows and Macintosh by Pacific Interactive. Nye's Science Guy personality is also prominent at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts—most notably his appearance with Ellen DeGeneres at Ellen's Energy Adventure, an attraction that ran from 1996 to 2017 at the Universe of Energy pavilion at Epcot at Walt Disney World. Nye's Science Guy character is also heard in a voice-over in the DINOSAUR attraction at Disney's Animal Kingdom, and was the on-air spokesman for the Noggin television network in 1999.