Is bill nye alive 2024

Known for his quirky bowtie and long lab coat, Bill Nye is among the most beloved science figures in modern history—and certainly one of the most well known. The television program, which aired on PBS, was aimed at making science entertaining.

What is bill nye known for

Nye was prone to wacky stunts such as grocery shopping in scuba gear or cutting bread with a chainsaw. The goofy show, which was watched by children and adults alike, made complicated subjects fun and accessible. And just this year, he announced the success of a spacecraft prototype that sails on sunbeams known as LightSail 2 which he worked on with the Planetary Society.

In the time in between, he never stopped working on scientific achievements, even as he appeared on television programs and comedy shows. In addition to being an inventor and the owner of three patents, Nye is also a prolific author and, more recently, an intrepid climate activist. He and his neighbour Ed Begley, Jr. Bill Nye was born in in Washington D.

His mother, the mathematically brilliant Jacqueline Jenkins-Nye, was a World War II codebreaker who worked with machines that intercepted German messages. There, with no electricity, he learned to tell time with a makeshift sundial the shadow of a shovel handle. From to , Nye attended Cornell University, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering.

During his time there, he took an astronomy class with Carl Sagan that reportedly influenced the science show he would later create. The same year that Nye graduated from Cornell, he got hired at the Boeing Corporation and moved to the Seattle area. He stayed at Boeing for nine years, through , during which time he invented an airplane part called a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor tube.

The tube— sometimes called a ripple dampener —is a part of jet airliner that dampens noise and pulsations. In , a year after his college graduation, Nye won the first round of a Steve Martin look-alike contest hosted by Warner Brothers Records.