That test shuttle never saw orbit, but in 1976 NASA had been wise enough to heed all the mail it was receiving from Trek fans to exploit the show’s popularity and name it for a starship that only flew in our collective imagination. A recent event where Nimoy beamed the Spock science credibility was when he was on hand to welcome the Enterprise space shuttle to New York’s Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Obviously Nimoy, no matter what he did or accomplished, was stuck with Spock, and decided to embrace his inner Vulcan science officer.Īlthough he was a successful actor and director after Star Trek ended, I think at a certain point Nimoy realized he could not only tap his character’s persona to promote his own art (photography, music and poetry) but also help educate the public about science in general and space in particular. I also understood why he followed it with his second installment in 1995, I am Spock. I saw firsthand why he had written his 1975 autobiography, I am not Spock, albeit to great uproar from the Trek fan base. To confess, during the session I was fighting temptation to add to the pile-on, but it seemed to me that he wanted to talk about photography or anything else. Spock, which he politely and warmly answered, before he made a graceful exit.

He barely touched his salad before he was completely bombarded with questions about Star Trek and Mr. There was one empty seat, and Nimoy walked over, asked if the chair was taken and sat down.

There was a lunch and as the tables quickly filled a colleague and I picked one that had a few seats left. It was for a photography product launch, although memory of what escapes me. I caught myself thinking: Spock smoked? Why would an ascetic, someone as fastidious about his health and logical about evidence-based science, ever take up smoking? And that mental jump from the actor to the character was what made Leonard Nimoy’s professional life a burden and a blessing-a hazard for many actors who play an iconic character.Ībout 20 years ago I was working at a photography magazine and attended an event in the Hayden Planetarium where Nimoy was a spokesman. It was even more sorrowful to find that years of smoking had caught up with him.

I was saddened to hear Leonard Nimoy died.

Leonard nimoy i am not spock