Nye was born on November 27, 1955, in Washington, D.C., to Jacqueline Jenkins-Nye (nee Jenkins; 1921-2000), who was a codebreaker during World War II, and Edwin Darby "Ned" Nye (1917-1997), who also served in World War II and worked as a contractor building an airstrip on Wake Island. Ned was captured and spent four years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp; living without electricity or watches, he learned how to tell time using the shadow of a shovel handle, spurring his passion for sundials. Jenkins-Nye was among a small elite group of young women known as "Goucher girls" whom the Navy had enlisted to help crack the codes that were used by the Japanese and German military.

In 1993, he developed a Bill Nye the Science Guy pilot for public broadcasting station KCTS-TV in Seattle. Nye collaborated with James McKenna, Erren Gottlieb and Elizabeth Brock to plan and create the show for KCTS. The group pitched the show as Mr. Wizard meets Pee-wee's Playhouse. He successfully obtained underwriting from the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy. Nye's program became part of a package of syndicated series that local stations could schedule to fulfill Children's Television Act requirements. Because of this, Bill Nye the Science Guy became the first program to run concurrently on public and commercial stations.  Bill Nye the Science Guy ran from 1993 to 1998, becoming one of the most-watched educational TV shows in the United States. While portraying "The Science Guy", Nye wore a powder blue lab coat and a bow tie. Nye Labs, the production offices and set where the show was shot, was located in a converted clothing warehouse near Seattle's Kingdome. Each episode of the program strived to educate younger viewers on various science concepts, yet it also attracted a significant adult audience as well. The show's ability to make science entertaining and accessible made it a popular teaching tool in classrooms across the country. With its quirky humor and rapid-fire MTV-style pacing, the show won critical acclaim and was nominated for 23 Emmy Awards, winning nineteen. Subsequent research studies found the program to be effective in teaching students science: those that viewed Bill Nye regularly were better able to generate explanations and extensions of scientific ideas than non-viewers.  In addition to the TV show, Nye published several books as The Science Guy. A CD-ROM based on the series, titled Bill Nye the Science Guy: Stop the Rock!, was released in 1996 for Windows and Macintosh by Pacific Interactive.  Nye's Science Guy personality is also prominent at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, most notably his appearance with Ellen DeGeneres at Ellen's Energy Adventure, an attraction which ran from 1996 to 2017 at the Universe of Energy pavilion located inside Epcot at Walt Disney World. His Science Guy persona was also the on-air spokesman for the Noggin television network during 1999.

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