Mike Brown scans the skies searching for and intensely studying distant bodies in our solar system in the hope of gaining insight into how our planet and the planets around it came to be. In this quest, he has discovered dozens of dwarf planets (and demoted one object from planet to dwarf planet) and is currently hot on the trail of Planet Nine -- a hypothesized body that is possibly the fifth largest planet of our solar system. He has won many awards and honors for his scholarship, including the Urey Prize for best young planetary scientist from the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Sciences; a Presidential Early Career Award; a Sloan Fellowship; the 2012 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, and, of course, the one that started his career, an honorable mention in his fifth-grade science fair. He was inducted into the National Academy of Science in 2014.