He was born October 5, 1958 Manhattan, New York City, United States. Tyson was born as the second of three children in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, and was raised in the Bronx. Tyson attended the Bronx High School of Science where he was captain of the wrestling team, and editor-in-chief of the school's Physical Science Journal. Tyson had an abiding interest in astronomy since he was nine years old, following his visit to Pennsylvania and seeing the stars, saying "it looks like the Hayden Planetarium". He obsessively studied astronomy in his teens, and eventually even gained some fame in the astronomy community by giving lectures on the subject at the age of fifteen. Tyson recalls that "so strong was that imprint [of the night sky] that I'm certain that I had no choice in the matter, that in fact, the universe called me." Astronomer Carl Sagan, who was a faculty member at Cornell University, tried to recruit Tyson to Cornell for undergraduate studies. Tyson chose to attend Harvard University, however, where he majored in physics and lived in Currier House. He was a member of the crew team during his freshman year, but returned to wrestling, eventually lettering in his senior year. Tyson earned a Bachelor of Arts in physics from Harvard in 1980 and began his graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a Master of Arts in astronomy in 1983. In 1985, he won a gold medal with the University of Texas dance team at a national tournament in the International Latin Ballroom style. Tyson transferred from the University of Texas at Austin to Columbia University in 1988. At Columbia University, he earned a Master of Philosophy in astrophysics in 1989, and a Doctor of Philosophy in astrophysics in 1991 under the supervision of Professor Michael M. Rich. While doing his thesis, he observed at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, where he collaborated on supernova cosmology with the Calán/Tololo Supernova Survey astronomers in their work on establishing Type Ia Supernovae as standard candles. These papers comprised part of the discovery papers of the use of Type Ia supernovae to measure distances, which led to the improved measurement of the Hubble constant and discovery of dark energy in 1998. He also collaborated with Brian Schmidt, a future winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, in the study of the measurement of distances to Type II Supernovae and the Hubble constant
Tyson's research has focused on observations in cosmology, stellar evolution, galactic astronomy, and stellar formation. He has held numerous positions at institutions including University of Maryland, Princeton University, the American Museum of Natural History, and Hayden