Bill Nye, Seattle’s science guy, awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom

Bill Nye, the beloved science guy with Seattle roots, was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden on Saturday at the White House.

You bet Nye wore that bow tie.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, another recipient of the medal that day, nodded as an announcer spoke of Nye’s origins as a mechanical engineer in Seattle and his 19 Emmy awards for the landmark children’s television program “Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

Fellow award recipient Jane Goodall, a conservationist who also brought science to life in the public imagination through mass media, looked on as Biden placed the medal around Nye’s neck.

Nye, 69, grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended college at Cornell University, where a class with astronomer Carl Sagan fueled his passion for science. Nye then moved to Seattle and took a job as an engineer with Boeing, where he designed a hydraulic tube for the 747 jumbo jetliner.

Winning a Steve Martin look-alike contest propelled Nye into the local stand-up comedy scene, earning him a spot on the KING-TV sketch show “Almost Live!” in the 1980s. It was on a call with “Almost Live!” host Ross Shafer that Nye adopted his “Science Guy” moniker; reportedly, Shafer was mispronouncing the word “gigawatt” on the radio and Nye called in to correct him as “Bill Nye the Science Guy” and rave about science.

In 1989, the Washington Department of Ecology asked Nye to star in a video about wetlands, during which he waded into a salt marsh in the Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge wearing his signature lab coat. That experience then formed the model for the “Science Guy” show, which was produced by KCTS-TV and aired on PBS from 1993 to 1999.

But while Nye’s national career took off, Seattle remained close to his heart. The city “saved my life,” he told The Seattle Times in 2020. Several Seattle friends, including Shafer, attended Nye’s wedding to journalist Liza Mundy at the Smithsonian Institution in 2022. He and Mundy recently moved to Georgetown in Washington, D.C., not to be confused with the Seattle neighborhood of the same name.

Nye has used his influence to advocate for climate and environmental policies, both at the state and national level. In October, Nye appeared in an ad opposing the effort to repeal the state’s Climate Commitment Act, which requires large polluters to reduce emissions or purchase allowances for them. The repeal effort, Initiative 2117, failed in the November election.

In 2021, Nye also attended an event alongside Gov. Jay Inslee where both advocated for vaccine adoption in response to COVID-19. 

Since his zany but affable “Science Guy” days, Nye has adopted a more outspoken political stance to advocate for climate policies. He appeared on an episode of “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver in 2019 to explain carbon pricing, during which he set a globe on fire with a blowtorch and used terms a family newspaper cannot print to lambaste inaction on climate change.

“Bill Nye has done more for the public’s understanding of science than even what he has done for bow ties,” Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement released Sunday. “His brilliance in standing for the vitality of science, from recognizing the science of (COVID) to the science of climate change, has educated and inspired millions of Americans. Thanks to Bill for helping Washington keep its climate law!”

Nye has written more than a dozen books. He has also served on the Mount St. Helens Institute board of directors and is the CEO of The Planetary Society, a nonprofit for space exploration founded by Sagan.

One of Nye’s most recent TV projects was a 2022 documentary series, Peacock’s “The End Is Nye,” which he described as “six one-hour disaster movies” about impending catastrophes.

Yet Nye has expressed optimism about future generations’ ability to save the world with science. In 2022, he told The Seattle Times that one day the people who have “been in Congress for decades” will “age out or retire or die” and be replaced by young people who care about climate change and pollution.

“Young people are going to come of age and change the world,” he said.

Nye was one of 19 to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Saturday.

The cohort appeared to carry signals to President-elect Donald Trump. Honorees included Michelin-starred chef and World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés, whom Trump sued after Andrés pulled out of a Trump hotel restaurant plan following the president-elect’s denigrating comments on immigrants; Democratic philanthropist George Soros; George Romney, the late father of former senator and Trump critic Mitt Romney; and the late Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, whose son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. backed Trump’s latest campaign and is now picked to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The honor has been bestowed to 654 people since 1963, according to the Congressional Research Service, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou and Mother Teresa.

Material from The Associated Press was included in this report.