The National Institute of Social Sciences is delighted to announce Neil deGrasse Tyson, Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History, as one of the 2022 Honorees for its Gold Honor Medal for distinguished service to society and humanity.

The National Institute will celebrate Dr. Tyson and the other Honorees at the 108th Annual Gold Medal Gala, which will be held in person in New York City on Tuesday, December 6, 2022. We hope you will be able to join us to honor Dr. Tyson and our other extraordinary Honorees and their accomplishments.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, author, and renowned science communicator who is the fifth head of the world-renowned Hayden Planetarium in New York City and the first occupant of its Frederick P. Rose Directorship. He is also a research associate of the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.

Dr. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. In 1994, he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist and the Princeton faculty as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. In 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210 million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000. Since 1996, he has been the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Dr. Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.

Dr. Tyson is a renowned and prolific writer and educator in science communication. He served on a 2001 government commission on the future of the U.S. aerospace industry and on the 2004 Moon, Mars and Beyond commission. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in the same year. From 2006 to 2011, he hosted the television show NOVA ScienceNow on PBS. Since 2009, Tyson has hosted the weekly podcast StarTalk. A spin-off, also called StarTalk, began airing on National Geographic in 2015. In 2014, he hosted the television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a successor to Carl Sagan's 1980 series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences awarded Tyson the Public Welfare Medal in 2015 for his "extraordinary role in exciting the public about the wonders of science."

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One of the nation’s oldest honorary societies, the National Institute of Social Sciences has presented Gold Medals each year to men and women whose lives have manifested the highest achievements and who have made significant contributions to society and to humanity. This year’s Honorees joined a distinguished, diverse pantheon of Honorees that stretches back to 1913.

Recent Gold Medal Honorees include Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Amartya Sen (2021); Max Stier, Darren Walker, and Judy Woodruff (2020); Paul Edward Farmer and Peter Gelb (2019); Daniel Kahneman, Geraldine Kunstadter, and Elizabeth Barlow Rogers (2018); Ron Chernow, Robert Shiller, and Michael Sovern (2017); Pauline Newman, Richard L. Ottinger, and Robert Putnam, (2016); and John Bogle, Paul Krugman, and Michelle Kwan (2015).

Previous Gold Medal Honorees, 1913-2020

About the National Institute of Social Sciences
Established in 1912, the National Institute of Social Sciences is a voluntary association of public-spirited citizens who explore issues of urgent and lasting concern. One of the nation’s oldest honorary societies, the National Institute sponsors speeches, discussions, and events that encourage balanced, non-partisan debate and discussion; celebrates distinguished Americans and world leaders who have contributed at the highest level to the welfare and improvement of society; and provides financial support to emerging scholars who are conducting research in the social sciences.