Watch the Exact Moment: Where the Neil deGrasse Tyson Meme Actually Came From
By Robert Thorne
The footage was recorded in early 2011 during a promotional media cycle for Big Think, an educational video platform that regularly interviewed leading academics and authors. Tyson sat down to answer a fundamental prompt: who was the greatest scientist to have ever lived? Without hesitation, he named Sir Isaac Newton.
Tyson launched into an animated narrative about Newton’s extraordinary productivity during the Great Plague of London. He described how Edmond Halley visited Newton in Cambridge to ask why planetary orbits were elliptical rather than circular. Newton replied that he had already calculated the mathematical proof, but upon misplacing his notes, promised to replicate the work.
To deliver that proof, Newton did not merely sit down with existing math. He invented integral and differential calculus. As Tyson delivered the punchline, that Newton conceived the foundations of modern mathematics before his 26th birthday and then simply moved on, his posture shifted dramatically.
Robert Thorne covers electric vehicle innovations, autonomous driving systems, global mobility trends, and automotive engineering developments.
