Bill Nye Collection, 1976-2005

Bill Nye moved to Seattle in 1977 to work as an engineer at Boeing and later for Sundstrand Data Control. In the early 1980s he began to do stand-up comedy and eventually was hired as a writer and performer on the Seattle TV comedy show Almost Live! It was there that he built the "Bill Nye the Science Guy" character, doing wildly popular comedic science demonstrations alongside show host John Keister. Nye partnered with producers James McKenna and Erren Gottlieb to pitch a “Bill Nye the Science Guy” show to various TV stations. It was picked up by Seattle’s PBS member station KCTS and was filmed and produced in Seattle from 1993-1999. With funding from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, it became the first TV show to be broadcast concurrently on public and commercial stations, as it was made available for syndication through Disney. After the run of the show, Nye continued to work in television and advocate for science, and to write books about science for children and adults. As of 2025, Nye continues to serve as the CEO of the Planetary Society, and to educate the public on matters of science. In June 2024, Nye was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in television, and in January 2025 he was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Biden.

Less well-known is Bill Nye’s lifelong passion for the sports of Ultimate (also known as Ultimate Frisbee) and Disc Golf (or Frisbee golf). As a child, Nye threw an early Wham-O disc, the “Pluto Platter Flying Saucer,” with his brother, and played “frisbee football” growing up in Washington DC. In 1973, during his first year at Cornell University, he joined the school’s newly founded Ultimate frisbee team, the Cornell Buds. When Nye graduated in 1977 and moved to Seattle, he continued playing by co-founding the city’s first men’s Ultimate team, the Olympic Windjammers, and serving as team captain. Bill Nye is an investor in the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), now the Ultimate Frisbee Association, a professional Ultimate league in North America founded in 2012. As of 2025, Nye continues to promote and participate in Ultimate Frisbee and Disc Golf.