Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work.

Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life. “My family is funny,” he says, “I mean funny in the sense that we make people laugh, not just funny looking.” Bill discovered that he had a talent for tutoring in high school, and while growing up in Washington, DC. He spent afternoons and summers de-mystifying math for his fellow students. When he wasn’t hitting the books, Bill was hitting the road on his bicycle. He spent hours taking it apart to “see how it worked.”

Bill’s fascination with how things work led him to Cornell University and a degree in Mechanical Engineering. After graduation, he headed for Seattle and work as an engineer at Boeing. “There’s a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube on the 747 horizontal stabilizer drive system that I like to think of as my tube,” he says. “I’ve always loved airplanes and flight. The space program was very important to me as a kid. I have a photo from the Apollo 11 mission with the caption, ‘Aldrin’s visor reflects Armstrong...’ Oh yeah, and they’re on the Moon!” exclaims Bill.

It was in Seattle that Bill began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night.

Eventually, he quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a mid-morning-to- late-at-night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle’s home-grown ensemble comedy show “Almost Live.” This is where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®” was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle’s NBC affiliate. With fellow KING-TV alumni Jim McKenna and Erren Gottlieb, Bill made a number of award winning shows, including the show he became so well known for, Bill Nye the Science Guy. The Science Guy show ran on weekends at first and then later on PBS five nights a week and in syndication on weekends. In some markets, you could see the Science Guy seven days a week.

While working on the Science Guy show, Bill won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing, and producing. The show won 28 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote four kids’ books about science. His fifth book, Bill Nye’s Great Big Book of
Tiny Germs came out in the spring of 2005.

Bill Nye is the host of two currently-running television series. The 100 Greatest Discoveries airs on the Science Channel. The Eyes of Nye airs on PBS stations across the country.

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