| Name | Carl Sagan |
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| Birth date | November 09, 1934 |
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| Birth place | Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
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| Residence | United States |
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| Nationality | American |
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| Death date | December 20, 1996 |
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| Death place | Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
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| Field | Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Astrobiology, Space science, Planetary science |
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| Work institutions | Cornell UniversityHarvard UniversitySmithsonian Astrophysical ObservatoryUniversity of California, Berkeley |
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| Alma mater | University of Chicago(B.A.), (B.Sc.), (M.Sc.), (Ph.D.) |
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| Known for | Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)CosmosVoyager Golden RecordPioneer plaqueContactPale Blue Dot |
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| Prizes | Oersted Medal (1990)NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal (twice)Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1978)National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal (1994) |
|---|
Carl Edward Sagan () (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and highly successful science popularizer and science communicator in the space and natural sciences. During his lifetime, he published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he advocated skeptical inquiry and the scientific method. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
Sagan became world-famous for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series , which he narrated and co-wrote. A book to accompany the program was also published. Sagan also wrote the novel Contact, the basis for the 1997 film of the same name.
Early life
Carl Sagan was born in
Brooklyn,
New York, to a
Russian Jewish family. His father, Sam Sagan, was a Russian immigrant garment worker; his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, a housewife. Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagan's words, "the mother she never knew". Sagan graduated from
Rahway High School in
Rahway, New Jersey, in 1951.
Education and scientific career
He attended the
University of Chicago, where he participated in the Ryerson Astronomical Society, received a
bachelor of arts with general and special honors in 1954, a
bachelor of science in 1955, and a
master of science in
physics in 1956 before earning a
doctor of philosophy in
astronomy and
astrophysics in 1960. During his time as an undergraduate, Sagan worked in the laboratory of the
geneticist H. J. Muller. From 1960 to 1962 Sagan was a
Miller Fellow at the
University of California, Berkeley. From 1962 to 1968, he worked at the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sagan lectured and did research at Harvard University until 1968, when he moved to Cornell University in New York. He became a full Professor at Cornell in 1971, and he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies there. From 1972 to 1981, Sagan was the Associate Director of the Center for Radio Physics and Space Research at Cornell.
Sagan was associated with the American space program from its inception. From the 1950s onward, he worked as an advisor to NASA, where one of his duties included briefing the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon. Sagan contributed to many of the robotic spacecraft missions that explored the solar system, arranging experiments on many of the expeditions. He conceived the idea of adding an unalterable and universal message on spacecraft destined to leave the solar system that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find it. Sagan assembled the first physical message that was sent into space: a gold-anodized plaque, attached to the space probe Pioneer 10, launched in 1972. Pioneer 11, also carrying another copy of the plaque, was launched the following year. He continued to refine his designs; the most elaborate message he helped to develop and assemble was the Voyager Golden Record that was sent out with the Voyager space probes in 1977. Sagan often challenged the decisions to fund the Space Shuttle and Space Station at the expense of further robotic missions.
Sagan taught a course on critical thinking at Cornell University until he died in 1996 from pneumonia, a few months after finding that he was in remission of myelodysplastic syndrome.
Scientific achievements
Sagan's contributions were central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of the planet
Venus. In the early 1960s no one knew for certain the basic conditions of that planet's surface, and Sagan listed the possibilities in a report later depicted for popularization in a
Time-Life book,
Planets. His own view was that Venus was dry and very hot as opposed to the balmy paradise others had imagined. He had investigated radio emissions from Venus and concluded that there was a surface temperature of . As a visiting scientist to NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he contributed to the first
Mariner missions to Venus, working on the design and management of the project.
Mariner 2 confirmed his conclusions on the surface conditions of Venus in 1962.
Sagan was among the first to hypothesize that Saturn's moon Titan might possess oceans of liquid compounds on its surface and that Jupiter's moon Europa might possess subsurface oceans of water. This would make Europa potentially habitable for life. Europa's subsurface ocean of water was later indirectly confirmed by the spacecraft Galileo. Sagan also helped solve the mystery of the reddish haze seen on Titan, revealing that it is composed of complex organic molecules constantly raining down onto the moon's surface.
He further contributed insights regarding the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter as well as seasonal changes on Mars. Sagan established that the atmosphere of Venus is extremely hot and dense with pressures increasing steadily all the way down to the surface. He also perceived global warming as a growing, man-made danger and likened it to the natural development of Venus into a hot, life-hostile planet through a kind of runaway greenhouse effect. Sagan and his Cornell colleague Edwin Ernest Salpeter speculated about life in Jupiter's clouds, given the planet's dense atmospheric composition rich in organic molecules. He studied the observed color variations on Mars’ surface and concluded that they were not seasonal or vegetational changes as most believed but shifts in surface dust caused by windstorms.
Sagan is best known, however, for his research on the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation.
He is also the 1994 recipient of the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare."
Scientific advocacy
members at the organization's founding. Carl Sagan is seated on the right.]]
Sagan's ability to convey his ideas allowed many people to better understand the cosmos —simultaneously emphasizing the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the Earth in comparison to the universe. He delivered the 1977 series of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution in London. He hosted and, with Ann Druyan, co-wrote and co-produced the highly popular thirteen-part PBS television series modeled on Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man.
Sagan was a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life. He urged the scientific community to listen with radio telescopes for signals from intelligent extraterrestrial life-forms. So persuasive was he that by 1982 he was able to get a petition advocating SETI published in the journal Science and signed by 70 scientists including seven Nobel Prize winners. This was a tremendous turnaround in the respectability of this controversial field. Sagan also helped Dr. Frank Drake write the Arecibo message, a radio message beamed into space from the Arecibo radio telescope on November 16, 1974, aimed at informing extraterrestrials about Earth.
Sagan was chief technology officer of the professional planetary research journal Icarus for twelve years. He co-founded the Planetary Society, the largest space-interest group in the world, with over 100,000 members in more than 149 countries, and was a member of the SETI Institute Board of Trustees. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division for Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society, as President of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
At the height of the Cold War, Sagan became involved in public awareness efforts for the effects of nuclear war when a mathematical climate model suggested that a substantial nuclear exchange could upset the delicate balance of life on Earth. He was one of five authors—the "S" of the "TTAPS" report as the research paper came to be known. He eventually co-authored the scientific paper hypothesizing a global nuclear winter following nuclear war. He also co-authored the book A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, a comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of nuclear winter.
Cosmos covered a wide range of scientific subjects including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe. The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980, winning an Emmy and a Peabody Award. It has been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people, making it the most widely watched PBS program in history.
Sagan also wrote books to popularize science, such as Cosmos, which reflected and expanded upon some of the themes of A Personal Voyage, and became the best-selling science book ever published in English; The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, which won a Pulitzer Prize; and . Sagan also wrote the best-selling science fiction novel Contact, but did not live to see the book's 1997 motion picture adaptation, which starred Jodie Foster and won the 1998 Hugo Award.
: Earth is a bright pixel when photographed from "Voyager 1" six billion kilometers out (past Pluto). Sagan encouraged NASA to generate this image.]] He wrote a sequel to Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, which was selected as a notable book of 1995 by The New York Times. He appeared on PBS' Charlie Rose program in January 1995. Sagan also wrote an introduction for the bestselling book by Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time. Sagan was also known for his popularization of science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among the general public, and his positions in favor of scientific skepticism and against pseudoscience, such as his debunking of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction. To mark the tenth anniversary of Sagan's passing, David Morrison, a former student of Sagan, recalled "Sagan's immense contributions to planetary research, the public understanding of science, and the skeptical movement" in Skeptical Inquirer.
Sagan hypothesized in January 1991 that enough smoke from the 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires "might get so high as to disrupt agriculture in much of South Asia…" He later conceded in The Demon-Haunted World that this prediction did not turn out to be correct: "it was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4°–6°C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared." A 2007 study noted that modern computer models have been applied to the Kuwait oil fires, finding that individual smoke plumes are not able to loft smoke into the stratosphere, but that smoke from fires covering a large area, like some forest fires or the burning of cities that would be expected to follow a nuclear strike, would loft significant amounts of smoke into the stratosphere.
In his later years Sagan advocated the creation of an organized search for near Earth objects that might impact the Earth. When others suggested creating large nuclear bombs that could be used to alter the orbit of a NEO that was predicted to hit the Earth, Sagan proposed the Deflection Dilemma: If we create the ability to deflect an asteroid away from the Earth, then we also create the ability to deflect an asteroid towards the Earth—providing an evil power with a true doomsday bomb.
Billions and billions
probes which would land on
Mars. Sagan examined possible landing sites for Viking along with Mike Carr and Hal Masursky.]]
From Cosmos and his frequent appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Sagan became associated with the catch phrase "billions and billions". Sagan stated that he never actually used the phrase in the Cosmos series. The closest that he ever came was in the book Cosmos, where he talked of "billions upon billions":
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However, his frequent use of the word billions, and distinctive delivery emphasizing the "b" (which he did intentionally, in place of more cumbersome alternatives such as "billions with a 'b'", in order to distinguish the word from "millions" in viewers' minds), Gary Kroeger, Mike Myers, Bronson Pinchot, Penn Jillette, Harry Shearer, and others. Frank Zappa satirized the line in the song "Be In My Video", noting as well "atomic light". Sagan took this all in good humor, and his final book was entitled which opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catch phrase, observing that Carson himself was an amateur astronomer and that Carson's comic caricature often included real science.
Social concerns
Sagan believed that the
Drake equation, on substitution of reasonable estimates, suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations highlighted by the
Fermi paradox suggests
technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves rather quickly. This stimulated his interest in identifying and publicizing ways that humanity could destroy itself, with the hope of avoiding such a
cataclysm and eventually becoming a
spacefaring species. Sagan's deep concern regarding the potential destruction of
human civilization in a
nuclear holocaust was conveyed in a memorable cinematic sequence in the final episode of , called "Who Speaks for Earth?" Sagan had already resigned from the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and voluntarily surrendered his top secret clearance in protest over the
Vietnam War. Following his marriage to his third wife (novelist
Ann Druyan) in June 1981, Sagan became more politically active—particularly in opposing escalation of the
nuclear arms race under President
Ronald Reagan.
In March 1983, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative—a multi-billion dollar project to develop a comprehensive defense against attack by nuclear missiles, which was quickly dubbed the "Star Wars" program. Sagan spoke out against the project, arguing that it was technically impossible to develop a system with the level of perfection required, and far more expensive to build than for an enemy to defeat through decoys and other means—and that its construction would seriously destabilize the nuclear balance between the United States and the Soviet Union, making further progress toward nuclear disarmament impossible.
When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared a unilateral moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons, which would begin on August 6, 1985—the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima—the Reagan administration dismissed the dramatic move as nothing more than propaganda, and refused to follow suit. In response, American anti-nuclear and peace activists staged a series of protest actions at the Nevada Test Site, beginning on Easter Sunday in 1986 and continuing through 1987. Hundreds of people were arrested, including Sagan, who was arrested on two separate occasions as he climbed over a chain-link fence at the test site.
Personal life and beliefs
Sagan was married three times: in 1957, to biologist
Lynn Margulis, mother of
Dorion Sagan and
Jeremy Sagan; in 1968, to artist
Linda Salzman, mother of
Nick Sagan; and in 1981, to author
Ann Druyan, mother of Alexandra Rachel (Sasha) Sagan and Samuel Democritus Sagan. His marriage to Druyan continued until his death in 1996.
Isaac Asimov described Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky.
Sagan wrote frequently about religion and the relationship between religion and science, expressing his skepticism about the conventional conceptualization of God as a sapient being. For example:
Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others—for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein—considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws.
In another description of his view of God, Sagan emphatically writes:
The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.''"
Sagan, however, denied that he was an atheist: "An atheist has to know a lot more than I know." In reply to a question in 1996 about his religious beliefs, Sagan answered, "I'm agnostic." Sagan maintained that the idea of a creator of the universe was difficult to prove or disprove and that the only conceivable scientific discovery that could challenge it would be an infinitely old universe. According to his last wife, Ann Druyan, he was not a believer:
In 2006, Ann Druyan edited Sagan's 1985 Glasgow Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology into a book, , in which he elaborates on his views of divinity in the natural world.
Sagan is also widely regarded as a freethinker or skeptic; one of his most famous quotations, in Cosmos, was, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This was based on a nearly identical statement by fellow founder of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, Marcello Truzzi, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." This idea originated with Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), a French mathematician and astronomer who said, "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness."
Late in his life, Sagan's books elaborated on his skeptical, naturalistic view of the world. In , he presented tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent ones, essentially advocating wide use of critical thinking and the scientific method. The compilation , published in 1997 after Sagan's death, contains essays written by Sagan, such as his views on abortion, and his widow Ann Druyan's account of his death as a skeptic, agnostic, and freethinker.
Sagan warned against humans' tendency towards anthropocentrism. He was the faculty adviser for the Cornell Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In the Cosmos chapter "Blues For a Red Planet", Sagan wrote, "If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes."
Sagan was a user and advocate of marijuana. Under the pseudonym "Mr. X", he contributed an essay about smoking cannabis to the 1971 book Marihuana Reconsidered. The essay explained that marijuana use had helped to inspire some of Sagan's works and enhance sensual and intellectual experiences. After Sagan's death, his friend Lester Grinspoon disclosed this information to Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson. The publishing of the biography, Carl Sagan: A Life, in 1999 brought media attention to this aspect of Sagan's life.
In 1994, engineers at Apple Computer code-named the Power Macintosh 7100 "Carl Sagan" in the hope that Apple would make "billions and billions" with the sale of the PowerMac 7100. Sagan then sued Apple for libel, a form of defamation, in federal court. The court granted Apple's motion to dismiss Sagan's claims and opined in dicta that a reader aware of the context would understand Apple was "clearly attempting to retaliate in a humorous and satirical way", and that "It strains reason to conclude that Defendant was attempting to criticize Plaintiff's reputation or competency as an astronomer. One does not seriously attack the expertise of a scientist using the undefined phrase 'butt-head'." Sagan then sued for Apple's original use of his name and likeness, but again lost. Sagan appealed the ruling.
Sagan briefly served as an adviser on Stanley Kubrick's film . Sagan proposed that the film would suggest, rather than depict, extraterrestrial superintelligence.
Sagan and UFOs
Sagan had some interest in
UFO reports from at least 1964 when he had several conversations on the subject with
Jacques Vallee. Though quite skeptical of any extraordinary answer to the UFO question, Sagan thought scientists should study the phenomenon, at least because there was widespread public interest in UFO reports.
Stuart Appelle notes that Sagan "wrote frequently on what he perceived as the logical and empirical fallacies regarding UFOs and the abduction experience. Sagan rejected an extraterrestrial explanation for the phenomenon but felt there were both empirical and pedagogical benefits for examining UFO reports and that the subject was, therefore, a legitimate topic of study."
In 1966, Sagan was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force's UFO investigation project. The committee concluded Blue Book had been lacking as a scientific study, and recommended a university-based project to give the UFO phenomenon closer scientific scrutiny. The result was the Condon Committee (1966–1968), led by physicist Edward Condon, and in their final report they formally concluded that UFOs, regardless of what any of them actually were, did not behave in a manner consistent with a threat to national security.
Ron Westrum writes that "The high point of Sagan's treatment of the UFO question was the AAAS's symposium in 1969. A wide range of educated opinions on the subject were offered by participants, including not only proponents such as James McDonald and J. Allen Hynek but also skeptics like astronomers William Hartmann and Donald Menzel. The roster of speakers was balanced, and it is to Sagan's credit that this event was presented in spite of pressure from Edward Condon".
Death
After a long and difficult fight with
myelodysplasia, which included three
bone marrow transplants, Sagan died of
pneumonia at the age of 62 at the
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in
Seattle, Washington, on December 20, 1996. He was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in
Ithaca, New York.
Posthumous recognition
The 1997 movie
Contact, based on Sagan's
novel of the same name and finished after his death, ends with the dedication "For Carl".
In 1997, the Sagan Planet Walk was opened in Ithaca New York. It is a walking scale model of the solar system, extending 1.2 km from the center of The Commons in downtown Ithaca, NY, to the Sciencenter, a hands-on museum. The exhibition was created in memory of Carl Sagan, who was an Ithaca resident and Cornell Professor. Professor Sagan had been a founding member of the museum's advisory board.
The landing site of the unmanned Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station on July 5, 1997.
Sagan's son, Nick Sagan, wrote several episodes in the Star Trek franchise. In an episode of entitled "Terra Prime", a quick shot is shown of the relic rover Sojourner, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, placed by a historical marker at Carl Sagan Memorial Station on the Martian surface. The marker displays a quote from Sagan: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you." Sagan's student Steve Squyres led the team that landed the Spirit Rover and Opportunity Rover successfully on Mars in 2004.
Asteroid 2709 Sagan is also named in his honor.
On November 9, 2001, on what would have been Sagan's 67th birthday, the NASA Ames Research Center dedicated the site for the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Cosmos. "Carl was an incredible visionary, and now his legacy can be preserved and advanced by a 21st century research and education laboratory committed to enhancing our understanding of life in the universe and furthering the cause of space exploration for all time", said NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. Ann Druyan was at the Center as it opened its doors on October 22, 2006.
Sagan has at least three awards named in his honor:
The Carl Sagan Memorial Award presented jointly since 1997 by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and the Planetary Society,
The Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Public Communication in Planetary Science presented since 1998 by the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences (AAS/DPS) for outstanding communication by an active planetary scientist to the general public — Carl Sagan was one of the original organizing committee members of the DPS, and
The
Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science presented by the
Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) — Sagan himself was the first recipient of the CSSP award in 1993.
In 2006, the Carl Sagan Medal was awarded to astrobiologist and author
David Grinspoon, the son of Sagan's friend
Lester Grinspoon.
On December 20, 2006, the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, a blogger, Joel Schlosberg, organized a Carl Sagan "blog-a-thon" to commemorate Sagan's death, and the idea was supported by Nick Sagan. Many members of the blogging community participated.
August 2007 the Independent Investigative Group IIG awarded Sagan posthumously a Lifetime Achievement Award. This honor has also been awarded to Harry Houdini and James Randi.
In 2008, Benn Jordan, also known as "The Flashbulb", released the album Pale Blue Dot: A Tribute to Carl Sagan.
In 2009, clips from Carl Sagan's Cosmos were used as the basis for A Glorious Dawn, the first video produced for the Symphony of Science, an educational music video production by composer John Boswell. Musician Jack White later released this song as a vinyl single under his record label Third Man Records. Additional clips were used in several followup videos which featured Sagan alongside other noted scientists and proponents of rational thinking, such as Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Brian Greene, Lawrence M. Krauss, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Sagan is the only scientist featured in every Symphony of Science video.
In 2010, the 76th anniversary of Carl Sagan's birth, the second "Carl Sagan Day" was celebrated on November 6.
Awards and honors
Annual Award for Television Excellence – 1981 – The Ohio State University – PBS series
Apollo Achievement Award – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal – National Aeronautics and Space Administration (twice)
Emmy – Outstanding Individual Achievement – 1981 – PBS series Cosmos
Emmy – Outstanding Informational Series – 1981 – PBS series Cosmos
Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Helen Caldicott Leadership Award – Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament
Hugo Award – 1981 – Cosmos
Humanist of the Year – 1981 – Awarded by the American Humanist Association
In Praise of Reason Award – 1987 – Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
Isaac Asimov Award – 1994 – Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award – American Astronautical Society
John W. Campbell Memorial Award – 1974 –
Joseph Priestley Award – "For distinguished contributions to the welfare of mankind"
Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific – 1974
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal – Awarded by the Soviet Cosmonauts Federation
Locus Award 1986 – Contact
Lowell Thomas Award – Explorers Club – 75th Anniversary
Masursky Award – American Astronomical Society
Miller Research Fellowship – Miller Institute (1960–1962)
Oersted Medal – 1990 – American Association of Physics Teachers
Peabody Award – 1980 – PBS series Cosmos
Prix Galbert – The international prize of Astronautics
Public Welfare Medal – 1994 – National Academy of Sciences
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction – 1978 – The Dragons of Eden
SF Chronicle Award – 1998 – Contact
Named the "99th Greatest American" on the June 5, 2005, Greatest American show on the Discovery Channel
Publications
Planets (LIFE Science Library), Sagan, Carl, Jonathan Norton Leonard and editors of Life, Time, Inc., 1966
Intelligent Life in the Universe, I.S. Shklovskii coauthor, Random House, 1966, 509 pgs
, Thornton Page coauthor, Cornell University Press, 1972, 310 pgs
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. MIT Press, 1973, 428 pgs
Mars and the Mind of Man, Sagan, Carl, et al., Harper & Row, 1973, 143 pgs
, Jerome Agel coauthor, Anchor Press, 1973, ISBN 0-521-78303-8, 301 pgs
Other Worlds. Bantam Books, 1975
, Sagan, Carl, et al., Random House, ISBN 0-394-41047-5, 1978
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Ballantine Books, 1978, ISBN 0-345-34629-7, 288 pgs
. Ballantine Books, 1979, ISBN 0-345-33689-5, 416 pgs
Cosmos. Random house, 1980. Random House New Edition, May 7, 2002, ISBN 0-375-50832-5, 384 pgs
, Sagan, Carl et al., Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985
Comet, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, 1985, ISBN 0-345-41222-2, 496 pgs
Contact. Simon and Schuster, 1985; Reissued August 1997 by Doubleday Books, ISBN 1-56865-424-3, 352 pgs
, Richard Turco coauthor, Random House, 1990, ISBN 0-394-58307-8, 499 pgs
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, October 1993, ISBN 0-345-38472-5, 528 pgs
. Random House, November 1994, ISBN 0-679-43841-6, 429 pgs
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Ballantine Books, March 1996, ISBN 0-345-40946-9, 480 pgs (note: the book was first published and copyrighted in 1995 with an errata slip inserted)
, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, June 1997, ISBN 0-345-37918-7, 320 pgs
, Carl Sagan (writer) & Ann Druyan (editor), 1985 Gifford lectures, Penguin Press HC, November 2006, ISBN 1-59420-107-2, 304 pgs
References
Further reading
External links
The Carl Sagan Portal
BBC Radio program "Great Lives" on Carl Sagan's life
A Man whose time Has come – Interview with Carl Sagan by Ian Ridpath, New Scientist 1974 July 4
Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization
Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Public Communication in Planetary Science, presented by the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences (AAS/DPS)
Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute
Carl Sagan’s Life and Legacy as Scientist, Teacher, and Skeptic, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
Cosmos – Full Episodes and Clips streaming online for free – Hulu, Cosmos online for free
A Tribute to Carl Sagan: Our Place in the Universe, The Skeptics Society
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