Anecdotes

Quit working at Boeing Aircraft in the early 1980s to become a stand-up comedian.

Worked as an engineer at Boeing Aircraft in Seattle, and appeared in at least three training films, some of which are still popular among the workers there.

He began his career as a stand-up comedian after he won a Steve Martin lookalike contest.

His parents are Jacqueline Blanche (Jenkins) and Edwin Darby "Ned" Nye, a quartermaster in the military during World War II. His father spent nearly four years as a prisoner of war mostly in China in a Japanese POW camp. He later moved to Washington, D.C., where he discovered dozens of sundials. He photographed them and wrote an unusual book, "Sundials of Maryland and Virginia". Thus resulted a little family business selling Ned Nye's "Sandial®", a sundial suitable for the beaches of the Atlantic seaboard. His mother served as a cryptologist for the United States Navy during World War II.

He designed a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor which is used in Boeing 747s.

Premiered his Science Guy character on the Seattle sketch comedy show Almost Live! (1984).

An honored as Rhodes Class of '56 visiting professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he received his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering. He studied under Carl Sagan.

Enjoys 1930s/1940s-style swing dancing and attended dances at the most recent Camp Hollywood.

Self-proclaimed geek in high school. He wore a tie every day, even when that aspect of the dress code was phased out. He attended and graduated from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.

His first childhood memory is throwing a rubber band-powered airplane, the Sky Streak, and figuring out how to make it turn left so he could stay in one place and make the plane come back to him.

Received an honorary degree (Doctor of Science) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and received honorary degrees from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Williamette University, Rutgers University, Lehigh University, and Simon Fraser University (SFU).

Bill's maternal grandmother, Lucie Marie Berta Briot, was French, and was born in Rennepont, Haute-Marne, France. She married Bill's grandfather, Sanford Swindell Jenkins, from Town Creek, Brunswick, North Carolina, in 1919, after WWI. His other ancestry includes English, Irish and Welsh. Bill has deep roots in his birthplace of Washington, D.C., going back to at least his paternal great-great-grandmother Mary E., born there in 1835. On his father's side, he also has considerable Colonial American ancestry in New England, particularly Massachusetts, where the Nye family settled in the 1600s.

One of his characters on the Seattle sketch comedy show Almost Live! (1984) was a humorless caped superhero, Speed Walker.

Announced he was engaged to be married to Blair Tindall on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005) in December 2005. The "marriage" lasted less than a month before it was either annulled or deemed invalid (sources disagree on the detail). In November 2007, Nye filed for a restraining order against "ex-fiance" Tindall, saying that he wondered if she might have poured solvent on his garden. The restraining order was later dismissed.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden on January 4, 2025, the highest honor bestowed upon a civilian, at a White House ceremony for his services to science communication.

One of his Almost Live! (1984) co-stars in Seattle was Bob Nelson, screenwriter of the road movie Nebraska (2013).

Currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Neighbors include Alex Trebek and Ed Begley Jr..

Serves on the Advisory Board of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science.

Good friends with Kevin Brauch.

Sometimes gets confused with actor Bill Nighy even though they meet in New York City.