William Sanford Nye was born on 27 November 1955, in Washington, D.C., USA, and as Bill Nye is a noted comedian, actor, engineer, scientist, as well as a television host. To the public, Bill is perhaps still best known for his educational television program called “Bill Nye the Science Guy”, which aired on television screens from 1993 until 1998.
A well-known scientist and a television host, just how rich is Bill Nye as of early 2018? According to sources, Bill’s net worth is estimated to be over $6.5 million, most of which he has accumulated from his appearances on television screens, during a working career which began in the late 1970s.
Bill Nye Net Worth $6.5 Million
Bill’s mother, Jacqueline, was a World War 2 code-breaker for the US Navy, and his father, Edwin a noted sundial specialist, having suffered in a Japanese POW camp without electricity. Bill was educated at Sidwell Friends School, and upon matriculation in 1973, enrolled into Cornell University, from where he graduated with a degree in science and mechanical engineering. Bill initially found a job at the multi-national corporation, The Boeing Company, being credited with inventing a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube used on the Boeing 747 – which was the basis of his net worth – and even tried to become an astronaut, but met with multiple rejections from NASA.
Meantime, Bill started doing stand-up comedy on the side, and then turned to television, debuting in 1987 on the comedy sketch show entitled “Almost Live!” on KING-TV in Seattle. He then starred in “Back to the Future: The Animated Series”, and eventually in 1993 launched “Bill Nye the Science Guy”. Co-created by Nye, James McKenna and Erren Gottlieb, the show mainly focused on the pre-teen audiences, as it aimed to teach and explore a variety of scientific topics. Even though the show finished its run many years ago, “Bill Nye the Science Guy” is still popular in high schools, and on various PBS stations. As the popularity of the latter show grew, so did Nye’s appearances on other television projects. In 1998, he landed a role in Robert King’s “Principal Takes a Holiday”, then starred in “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”, and appeared in “The Dr. Oz Show”.
Additionally, Bill Nye created a science program called “The Eyes of Nye”, which was aimed towards adults rather than children. Since then, Nye has been a guest star on such television shows as “Numbers” with Rob Morrow and Judd Hirsch, “Larry King Live”, “Stargate Atlantis” starring Neil deGrasse Tyson, and “America’s Most Smartest Model”. For his contribution to popularising science, Bill Nye was rewarded with a doctor of science degree from Rensselar Polytechnic Institute, Willamete University, and Johns Hopkins University. In 2010, he was further rewarded with Humanist of the Year Award.
More recently, in 2013 Bill Nye became a member of “Dancing with the Stars” television show, where he was partnered with Tyne Stecklein, but was injured and forced to withdraw. In 2014, he was invited to be an interviewer, as well as a guest on an event held in the White House, called “White House Student Film Festival”. All these projects have added steadily to Bill’s net worth.
In regards to his personal life, in 2006 Bill Nye started a relationship with the journalist and performer Blair Tindall, and they married later that same year. However, their marriage lasted for several weeks only, as Nye decided to leave when it turned out that the marriage license was invalid, and the consequences of the separation has continued acrimoniously for several years, apparently not completely settled to this day.
Bill now divides his time between residences in Los Angeles and New York City.
Humanist of the Year Award (2010, American Humanist Association), In Praise of Reason Award (2011, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSICOP), Candle in the Dark Award (1997 by CSICOP)
Nominations
Honorary doctorate (Johns Hopkins University - 2008, Willamette University - 2011, Simon Fraser University - 2015)
Movies
A Brief History of Time Travel (2017, documentary), Bill Nye the Science Guy Tackles DeflateGate (2015), 100 Greatest Discoveries (2004, documentary), Astronauts (1997), American Experience (1991-1996, documentary), Degenerate Art (1993)
TV Shows
Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–1998), Bill Nye Saves the World (2017–present), Quick Reviews with Maverick (2016), The Big Bang Theory, Inside Amy Schumer, Dancing with the Stars (2013), Miles from Tomorrowland (2015-2016), The All New Mickey Mouse Club (1989)
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Trademark
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Always appears with bow-tie and lab coat
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Quote
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[on how he makes the average person understand science] You have to have learning objectives - things you want to get across. You want to make a point: Humans and dinosaurs did not live concurrently. If you get the adjacent carbon dating of volcanic soil, hat's cool. But what I want you to get is that ancient dinosaurs and humans did not live at the same time. The rest is gravy.
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Science rules!
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Our country is the only country in the world that has some people that don't believe in evolution. America is still the leader in scientific advancement, and yet we have adults who want to ignore the evidence of millions and millions of years to believe something much more complicated and complex with zero proof. It's important that our children are raised to be educated, well-rounded tax paying citizens that understand the importance of technology and science. If you're an adult and you choose not to believe in science, fine, but please don't prevent your children from learning about it and letting them draw their own conclusions. I think in 30-40 years this won't even be an issue, but right now it's a major concern for a country that has a significant amount of adults raising children to ignore the facts and the evidence surrounding them about our universe, our creation and our well-being.
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[advice to young scientists] Try things then clean up after yourself. Then try some more things and clean that up too.
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Fact
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His maternal grandmother, Lucy Marie Berta Briot, was French. His other ancestry includes English, Welsh, and Irish.
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One of his "Almost Live" co-stars in Seattle was Bob Nelson, screenwriter of "Nebraska".
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One of his characters on the Seattle-based sketch show, "Almost Live", was a humorless caped superhero, Speed Walker.
Announced he was engaged to be married to Blair Tindall on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005) in December 2005. The "marriage" lasted less than a month before it was either annulled or deemed invalid (sources disagree on the detail). In November 2007, Nye filed for a restraining order against "ex-fiance" Tindall, saying that he wondered if she might have poured solvent on his garden. The restraining order was later dismissed.
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Enjoys 30s/40s style swing dancing and attended dances at the most recent Camp Hollywood.
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Premiered his Science Guy character on the Seattle sketch comedy show Almost Live! (1984).
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An honored as Rhodes Class of '56 Visiting Professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he received his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering. He studied under Carl Sagan.
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His first childhood memory is throwing a rubber band-powered airplane, the Sky Streak, and figuring out how to make it turn left so he could stay in one place and make the plane come back to him.
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He designed a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor which is used in Boeing 747s.
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Self proclaimed geek in high school. He wore a tie everyday, even when that aspect of the dress code was phased out. He graduated from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC.
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His father, Edwin D. "Ned" Nye, a quartermaster in the military during World War II, spent nearly four years as a prisoner of war mostly in China in a Japanese P.O.W camp. He later moved to Washington, DC where he discovered dozens of sundials. He photographed them and wrote an unusual book, "Sundials of Maryland and Virginia." Thus resulted a little family business selling Ned Nye's "Sandial®," a sundial suitable for the beaches of the Atlantic seaboard.
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Started his career after he won a Steve Martin lookalike contest.
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Worked as an engineer at Boeing Aircraft in Seattle, and appeared in at least 3 training films, some of which are still popular among the workers there.
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Schools Attended: Lafayette Elementary School and Sidwell Friends School both in Washington, DC. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
$6.5 Million
