Mike Brown briefly discovered the 10th planet in the solar system, before Eris, along with Pluto, was demoted to dwarf planet status. His discoveries, exploration of the Kuiper belt, and the controversy surrounding Pluto’s status are explored in his book, “How I Killed Pluto (and Why It Had It Coming).”

During the course of the book, it becomes obvious that Brown is one of us: a geek. The evidence that proves this is not his work in astronomy. Around the same time he was discovering large objects in the sky, he became a new parent.

“Lilah did little more than sleep and eat and cry, which to me was the most fascinating thing in the entire universe. Why did she cry? When did she sleep? What made her eat a lot one day and little the next? Was she changing with time?” –Pg 139, How I Killed Pluto

Any doting parent might ponder similar things… a geek would go further.

“I did what any obsessed person would do in such a case: I recorded data, plotted it, and calculated statistical correlations. First I just wrote on scraps of paper and made charts on graph paper, but I very quickly became more sophisticated. I wrote computer software to make a beautifully colored plot showing times when Diane fed Lilah, in black; when I fed her, in blue (expressed mother’s milk, if you must know); Lilah’s fussy times, in angry red; her happy times, in green. I calculated patterns in sleeping times, eating times, crying times, length of sleep, amounts eaten.”–Pg 139

If you don’t believe Brown’s word, don’t worry, there is proof.

Then, I did what any obsessed parent would do these days: I put it all on the web.” pg 139