“Typically, when you look for role models, you want someone who has your interests and came from the same background. Well, look how restricting that is. What people should do is take role models a la carte. If there's someone whose character you appreciated, you respect that trait.”

American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. He studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University, and has been director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City since 1996. He was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University from 1991 to 1994, then joined the planetarium as a staff scientist and also taught at Princeton as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. At the American Museum of Natural History, he founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate there since 2003.