Delightful letters by a favorite of mine

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, letters

America's Astrophysicist, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, speaks out for science literacy with more passion and authority than anyone else I know. As busy as he is, he corresponds with many who write to him. In Letters from an Astrophysicist he has collected and categorized a goodly number of these.

Be begins with a prologue, titled "Happy 60th Birthday, NASA", in which he congratulates NASA, but points out the political pressure that had to be applied, a decade or so into their existence, to induce them to hire people besides male WASPs for significant positions. He also alludes to his own struggles as a science-hungry black youngster, who has nonetheless succeeded in a career formerly closed to "folks who look like" him.

I'll keep this short. Here is the closing portion of one letter to him:

[writing about the 3 billion nucleotides in human DNA and a set of perhaps similar size in a daddy-long-legs] How could a mere 3 gigabytes do all that. It takes far more just to run my iPhone.

Those 3 gigs don't seem to be enough to just dictate how my brain's 100 billion neurons and their trillions of synapses behave.

A portion of the reply:

Simple sets of "rules"can lead to extraordinary complexity.

Then, after discussing the supply chain needed to deliver milk, based on supply and demand and enlightened greed, he goes on:

…the entire universe is composed of just 92 elements … there are only four fundamental forces of nature … there are only four classes of fundamental particles … nearly all behavior of electromagnetic waves (light) can be derived from a set of four equations that fit on a Post-it® note…

His conclusion: We need not be overwhelmed by the complexity, but ought to be awed by how simple it is.

A part of any scientist's "territory" is questions about God and belief. Dr. Tyson is an agnostic (a more scientific stance than atheism), and though he is frequently challenged (sometimes abused) by believers, answers with grace, but doesn't back down. I appreciate that about him.

If you enjoy science writing at its best, read this, and then others of his books, 9 others by my count.