Republic of the Seven United Netherlands / Seven Provinces Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden / Zeven Provinciën
Confederal Republic
←   ← 1581–1795 →   →
Prinsenvlag Dutch Republic Lion
Motto Concordia res parvae crescunt[1] (Latin: Concord makes small things grow)
Provinces and Dependencies
Capital	None De facto The Hague (government seat)/ Amsterdam (cultural/financial centre/largest city)
Language(s)	Dutch
Government	Confederal Republic
Legislature	Dutch States-General
Historical era	Early Modern Age
- Act of Abjuration	26 July 1581
- French Revolutionary Wars	19 January 1795
Today part of	Netherlands

The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden), the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces (Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Provinciën) — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and ultimately the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands. Alternative names include the United Provinces, Foederatae Belgii Provinciae (Federated Belgic Provinces), and Belgica Foederata (Belgic Federation).

History[link]

Until the 16th century, the Low Countries – roughly now corresponding to Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg – consisted of a number of duchies, counties and bishoprics, most of which were under the supremacy of the Holy Roman Empire.

Most of the Low Countries had come under the rule of the House of Burgundy and subsequently the House of Habsburg. In 1549 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which further unified the Seventeen Provinces under his rule. Charles was succeeded by his son, King Philip II of Spain. In 1568 the Netherlands, led by William I of Orange, revolted against Philip II because of high taxes, persecution of Protestants by the government, and Philip's efforts to modernize and centralize the devolved-medieval government structures of the provinces.^[2] This was the start of the Eighty Years' War.

In 1579 a number of the northern provinces of the Netherlands signed the Union of Utrecht, in which they promised to support each other in their defence against the Spanish army. This was followed in 1581 by the Act of Abjuration, the declaration of independence of the provinces from Philip II.

In 1582 the United Provinces invited Francis, Duke of Anjou to lead them; but after a failed attempt to take Antwerp in 1583, the duke left the Netherlands again. After the assassination of William of Orange (10 July 1584), both Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England declined the offer of sovereignty. However, the latter agreed to turn the United Provinces into a protectorate of England (Treaty of Nonsuch, 1585), and sent the Earl of Leicester as governor-general. This was unsuccessful and in 1588 the provinces became a republic. The Union of Utrecht is regarded as the foundation of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, which was not recognized by the Spanish Empire until the Twelve Years' Truce in 1609.

The Republic of the United Provinces was officially recognized in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), and lasted until French revolutionary forces invaded in 1795 and set up a new republic, called the Batavian Republic which would be replaced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Holland.

The Netherlands regained independence from France in 1813. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 the names "United Provinces of the Netherlands" and "United Netherlands" were used. In 1815 it was rejoined with Austrian Netherlands, Luxembourg and Liège (the 'Southern provinces') to become the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, to create a strong buffer state north of France. After Belgium and Luxembourg became independent, the state finally became known as the Kingdom of the Netherlands, as it remains today.

Economic perspective[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

History of the Low Countries v t e
Frankish Kingdom (5th to 10th century)				Frisian Kingdom (600-734)
Carolingian Empire after 800
	West Francia ("France")	Independent Kingdom of Middle Francia (Lotharingia) (843–870)
Flanders and Lotharingia in Kingdom of West Francia (870–880)
	County of Flanders (862–1384) and other principalities (10th–14th centuries)	Kingdom then Duchy of Lotharingia in East Francia ("Germany") (880-1190)
Prince-Bishopric of Liège (980-1794) Duchy of Bouillon (988-1795) Imperial Abbey of Stavelot-Malmedy (1138-1795)		Duchy of Brabant (1183-1430) and other principalities (10th–15th centuries)	County/ Duchy of Luxembourg (963–1443)	County of Holland (880-1432) and other principalities (10th–15th centuries)
	Burgundian Netherlands (1384–1477)
	Habsburg Netherlands (Seventeen Provinces) (1482–1556)
	Spanish Netherlands (Southern Netherlands) (1556–1714)			Dutch Republic (1581–1795)
	Austrian Netherlands (Southern Netherlands) (1714–1795)
Liège Revolution (1789–1792)	United States of Belgium (1790)
Part of the French Republic (1795–1804) and the French Empire (1804–1815)				Batavian Republic (1795–1806)
				Kingdom of Holland (1806–1810)
United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815-1830)
Kingdom of Belgium (since 1830)			Gr Duchy Luxembourg (personal union)	Kingdom of the Netherlands (since 1830)
			Gr Duchy Luxembourg (since 1890)

History of the Netherlands
This article is part of a series
Early History
Germanic tribes
Roman Era
Migration Period
Medieval
Frankish Realm/The Franks
Middle Francia
Holy Roman Empire
Burgundian Netherlands
Seventeen Provinces
Republic
Eighty Years' War
United Provinces
The Golden Age
The Batavian revolution
Monarchy
Batavian Republic
Kingdom of Holland
First French Empire
United Kingdom of the Netherlands
Modern History
Netherlands in World War II
Netherlands
Topics
Military History
Colonial History
Dutch Language
Dutch literature
Naval influence
Inventions and discoveries
Luctor et Emergo
Dutch heraldry
Netherlands Portal v t e

From an economic perspective, the Republic of the United Provinces completely outperformed all expectations; it was a surprise to many that a nation not based on the church or on a single royal leader could be so successful. This period is known in the Netherlands as the Dutch Golden Age. The Dutch dominated world trade in the 17th century, conquering a vast colonial empire and operating the largest fleet of merchantmen of any nation. The County of Holland was the wealthiest and most urbanized region in the world.

The free trade spirit of the time received a strong augmentation through the development of a modern, effective stock market in the Low Countries.^[3] The Netherlands has the oldest stock exchange in the world, founded in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company. While Rotterdam has the oldest bourse in the Netherlands, the world's first stock exchange – that of the Dutch East-India Company – went public in six different cities. Later, a court ruled that the company had to reside legally in a single city, so Amsterdam is recognized as the oldest such institution based on modern trading principles. While the banking system evolved in the Low Countries, it was quickly incorporated by the well-connected English, stimulating English economic output.

Between 1590–1712 the Dutch also possessed one of the strongest navies in the world, allowing for their varied conquests including breaking the Portuguese sphere of influence on the Indian Ocean and in the Orient.

Politics[link]

The republic was a confederation of seven provinces, which had their own governments and were very independent, and a number of so-called Generality Lands. These latter were governed directly by the States-General (Staten-Generaal in Dutch), the federal government. The States-General were seated in The Hague and consisted of representatives of each of the seven provinces. The provinces of the republic were, in official feudal order:

1. The Duchy of Guelders (Gelre in Dutch)
2. The County of Holland
3. The County of Zeeland
4. The former Bishopric of Utrecht
5. The Lordship of Overijssel
6. The Lordship of Frisia
7. The Lordship of Groningen and Ommelanden.

In fact there was an eighth province, i.e. the Lordship of Drenthe, but this area was so poor it was exempt from paying confederal taxes and, as a corollary, was denied representation in the States-General. Each province was governed by the Provincial States, the main executive official (though not the official head of state) was a raadspensionaris. In times of war, the stadtholder, who commanded the army, would have more power than the raadspensionaris.

In theory the stadtholders were freely appointed by and subordinate to the states of each province. However in practice the princes of Orange of the House of Orange-Nassau, beginning with William the Silent, were always chosen as stadtholders of most of the provinces. Zeeland and usually Utrecht had the same stadtholder as Holland. There was a constant power struggle between the Orangists, who supported the stadtholders and specifically the princes of Orange, and the Republicans, who supported the States-General and hoped to replace the semi-hereditary nature of the stadtholdership with a true republican structure. Stadholder in Dutch means 'place-holder', similar to the English word 'stead' and 'in stead of'.

After the Peace of Westphalia several border territories were assigned to the United Provinces. They were federally-governed Generality Lands (Generaliteitslanden). They were Staats-Brabant (present North Brabant), Staats-Vlaanderen (present Zeeuws-Vlaanderen), Staats-Limburg (around Maastricht) and Staats-Oppergelre (around Venlo, after 1715).

The States-General of the United Provinces were in control of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (WIC), although some shipping expeditions were initiated by some of the provinces, mostly Holland and/or Zeeland.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution were influenced by the Constitution of the Republic of the United Provinces.^[4] In addition, the Act of Abjuration, essentially the declaration of independence of the United Provinces, is strikingly similar to the later American Declaration of Independence,^[5] though concrete evidence that the former directly influenced the latter is absent.

Religion[link]

In the Union of Utrecht of 20 January 1579, Holland and Zeeland were granted the right to accept only one religion (in practice Calvinism). Every other province had the freedom to regulate the religious question as it wished, although the Union stated every person should be free in the choice of his personal religion and no person should be prosecuted based on his or her religious choice.^[6] William of Orange had been a strong supporter of public as well as personal freedom of religion and hoped to unite Protestants and Catholics in the new union, and for him the Union was a defeat. In practice, Catholic services in all provinces were quickly forbidden and the Reformed Church became the "public" or "privileged" church in the Republic.^[7]

During the Republic, any person who wished to hold public office had to conform to the Reformed Church and take an oath to this effect. The extent to which different religions or denominations were persecuted depended much on the time period and regional or city leaders. In the beginning this was especially focused on Roman Catholics, being the religion of the enemy. In 17th-century Leiden, for instance, people opening their homes to services could be fined 200 guilders (a year's wage for a skilled tradesman) and banned from the city^[8] Throughout this, however, personal freedom of religion did exist, and was one factor – along with economic reasons – in causing large immigration of religious refugees from other parts of Europe.^[7]

In the first years of the Republic, controversy arose within the Reformed Church, mainly around the subject of predestination. This has become known as the struggle between Arminianism and Gomarism, or between Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants. The Synod of Dort in 1618 tackled this issue, which led to the banning of the Remonstrant faith.

Beginning in the 18th century, the situation changed from more or less active persecution of religious services to a state of restricted toleration of other religions, as long as their services took place secretly in non-recognizable churches.

Decline[link]

• Long-term rivalry between the two main factions in Dutch society, the Staatsgezinden (Republicans) and the Prinsgezinden (Royalists or Orangists), sapped the strength and unity of the country. Johan de Witt and the Republicans did reign supreme for a time at the middle of the 17th century (the First Stadtholderless Period) until his overthrow and murder in 1672. Subsequently, William III of Orange became stadtholder. After a stadtholderless era of 22 years and the Orangists regained power, his first problem was to survive the Franco-Dutch War (which was related to the Third Anglo-Dutch war), when France, England, Münster and Cologne united against his country.

• Wars to contain the expansionist policies of France in various coalitions after the Glorious Revolution, mostly including England, burdened the republic with huge debts, although little of the fighting after 1673 took place on its own territory. The necessity to maintain a vast army against France meant that less money could be spent on the navy, weakening the Republic's power against England. After William III's death in 1702 the Second Stadtholderless Period was inaugurated. The end of the War of Spanish Succession in 1713 marked the end of the republic as a major military power.

• Fierce competition for trade and colonies, especially from England, furthered the economic downturn of the country. The three Anglo-Dutch Wars and the rise of mercantilism had a negative effect on Dutch shipping and commerce.

• The establishment of the Bank of England, at a time when the Dutch were fighting against the French on Dutch soil, meant that money could be borrowed from London at lower interest rates^{[citation needed]}, and at greater reliability and protection. Gradually, London displaced Amsterdam as the leading European financial center.

See also[link]

• History of the Netherlands
• Union of Utrecht
• Eighty Years' War
• Dutch Golden Age
• List of Grand Pensionaries

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Republic of the Seven United Netherlands

Further reading[link]

• Adams, Julia. The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe. Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2005
• Israël, J.I. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995
• Reynolds, Clark G. Navies in History. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998
• Schama, Simon The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. New York: Random House USA, 1988

Coordinates: 52°04′48″N 4°18′00″E / 52.08°N 4.3°E / 52.08; 4.3

Carl Sagan
Sagan in 1980
Born	(1934-11-09)November 9, 1934 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died	December 20, 1996(1996-12-20) (aged 62) Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Residence	United States[1]
Nationality	United States
Fields	Astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, astrobiology, space science, planetary science
Institutions	Cornell University Harvard University Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory University of California, Berkeley
Alma mater	University of Chicago (B.A.), (B.Sc.), (M.Sc.), (PhD)
Known for	Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Cosmos: A Personal Voyage Cosmos Voyager Golden Record Pioneer plaque Contact Pale Blue Dot
Notable awards	NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal (1977) Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1978) Oersted Medal (1990) National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal (1994)

Carl Edward Sagan ( /ˈseɪɡɪn/; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers^[2] and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He advocated scientifically skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

Sagan is known for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote.^[3] The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. Sagan wrote the novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name.

Early life[link]

Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York,^[4] to a Ukrainian Jewish family. His father, Sam Sagan, was an immigrant garment worker from Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine;^[5] 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.^[6]

He had a sister, Carol, and the family lived in a modest apartment near the Atlantic Ocean, in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. According to Sagan, they were Reform Jews, the most liberal of the three main Jewish groups. Both Sagan and his sister agree that their father was not especially religious, but that their mother "definitely believed in God, and was active in the temple ... and served only Kosher meat."^[6]:12 During the height of the Depression, his father had to accept a job as a theater usher.

According to biographer Keay Davidson, Sagan's "inner war" was a result of his close relations with both his parents, who were in many ways "opposites." Sagan traced his later analytical urges to his mother, a woman who had known "extreme poverty as a child," and had grown up almost homeless in New York City during World War I and the 1920s.^[6]:2 She had her own intellectual ambitions as a young woman, but they were blocked by social restrictions, because of her poverty, her being a woman and wife, and her Jewish ethnicity. Davidson notes that she therefore "worshiped her only son, Carl. He would fulfill her unfulfilled dreams."^[6]:2

However, his "sense of wonder" came from his father, who was a "quiet and soft-hearted escapee from the Czar." In his free time, he gave apples to the poor, or helped soothe labor-management tensions within New York's "tumultuous" garment industry.^[6]:2 Although he was "awed" by Carl's "brilliance, his boyish chatter about stars and dinosaurs," he took his son's inquisitiveness in stride, as part of his growing up.^[6]:2 In his later years as a writer and scientist, Sagan would often draw on his childhood memories to illustrate scientific points, as he did in his book, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.^[6]:9 Sagan describes his parents' influence on his later thinking:

My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.^[7]

1939 World's Fair[link]

Sagan recalls that one of his best experiences was when he was four or five years old, his parents took him to the 1939 New York World's Fair. The exhibits became a turning point in his life. He later recalled the moving map of the "America of Tomorrow" exhibit: "It showed beautiful highways and cloverleaves and little General Motors cars all carrying people to skyscrapers, buildings with lovely spires, flying buttresses—and it looked great!"^[6]:14 At other exhibits, he remembered how a flashlight that shined on a photoelectric cell created a cracking sound, and how the sound from a tuning fork became a wave on an oscilloscope. He also witnessed the future media technology that would replace radio: television. Sagan wrote:

Plainly, the world held wonders of a kind I had never guessed. How could a tone become a picture and light become a noise?^[6]:14

He also saw one of the Fair's most publicized events, the burial of a time capsule at Flushing Meadows, which contained mementos of the 1930s to be recovered by Earth's descendants in a future millennium. "The time capsule thrilled Carl," writes Davidson. As an adult, Sagan and his colleagues created similar time capsules, but ones that would be sent out into the galaxy. These were the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record records, all of which were spinoffs of Sagan's memories of the World Fair.^[6]:15

World War II[link]

During World War II, Sagan's family worried about the fate of their European relatives. Sagan, however, was generally unaware of the details of the ongoing war. He writes, "Sure, we had relatives who were caught up in the Holocaust. Hitler was not a popular fellow in our household ... But on the other hand, I was fairly insulated from the horrors of the war." His sister, Carol, said that their mother "above all wanted to protect Carl ... She had an extraordinarily difficult time dealing with World War II and the Holocaust."^[6]:15 Sagan's book, The Demon-Haunted World (1996), included his memories of this conflicted period, when his family dealt with the realities of the war in Europe, but tried to prevent it from undermining his optimistic spirit.^[7]

Inquisitiveness about nature[link]

Soon after entering elementary school, he began to express a strong inquisitiveness about nature. Sagan recalled taking his first trips to the public library alone, at the age of five, when his mother got him a library card. He wanted to learn what stars were, since none of his friends or their parents could give him a clear answer:

I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars ... And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light ... The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.^[6]:18

About the time he was six or seven, he and a close friend took trips to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. While there, they went to the Hayden Planetarium and walked around the museum's exhibits of space objects, such as meteorites, and displays of dinosaurs and animals in natural settings. Sagan writes about those visits:

I was transfixed by the dioramas—lifelike representations of animals and their habitats all over the world. Penguins on the dimly lit Antarctic ice; ... a family of gorillas, the male beating his chest, ... an American grizzly bear standing on his hind legs, ten or twelve feet tall, and staring me right in the eye.^[6]:18

His parents helped nurture his growing interest in science by buying him chemistry sets and reading materials.^[8] His interest in space, however, was his primary focus, especially after reading science fiction stories by writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, which stirred his imagination about life on other planets, such as Mars. According to biographer Ray Spangenburg, these early years as Sagan tried to understand the mysteries of the planets, became a "driving force in his life, a continual spark to his intellect, and a quest that would never be forgotten."^[7]

Education and scientific career[link]

He attended the University of Chicago, where he participated in the Ryerson Astronomical Society,^[9] received a bachelor of arts in self-proclaimed "nothing" with general and special honors in 1954, a bachelor of science in physics in 1955, and a master of science in physics in 1956 before earning a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960.^[10][11][12] During his time as an honors program undergraduate, Sagan worked in the laboratory of the geneticist H. J. Muller and wrote a thesis on the origins of life with physical chemist H.C. Urey. 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 Ithaca, 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 US 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.^[13]

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[link]

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 500 °C (900 °F). 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.^[14] Europa's subsurface ocean of water was later indirectly confirmed by the spacecraft Galileo. The mystery of Titan's reddish haze was also solved with Sagan's help. The reddish haze was revealed to be due to complex organic molecules constantly raining down onto Titan's surface.^[15]

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.^[16]

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."^[17] He was denied membership in the Academy, reportedly because his media activities made him unpopular with many other scientists.^[18]

Scientific advocacy[link]

Planetary Society 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 in London.^[19] He hosted and, with Ann Druyan, co-wrote and co-produced the highly popular thirteen-part PBS television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage modeled on Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man.

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,^[3][20] making it the most widely watched PBS program in history.^[21] In addition, Time magazine ran a cover story about Sagan soon after the show broadcast, referring to him as "creator, chief writer and host-narrator of the new public television series Cosmos, [and] takes the controls of his fantasy spaceship."^[22]

Sagan was a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life. He urged the scientific community to listen with radio telescopes for signals from potential intelligent extraterrestrial life-forms. Sagan was so persuasive 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 increase 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 potential 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.^[23] 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.

Sagan also wrote books to popularize science which reflected and expanded upon some of the themes of A Personal Voyage, and became the best-selling science book ever published in English;^[24] The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, which won a Pulitzer Prize; and Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Sagan also wrote the best-selling science fiction novel Contact in 1985, based on a film treatment he wrote with his wife in 1979, but he did not live to see the book's 1997 motion picture adaptation, which starred Jodie Foster and won the 1998 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Adaption.

Pale Blue Dot: 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.^[25] 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 death, 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.^[26]

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."^[27] 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.^{[28][29][30][31]}

In his later years Sagan advocated the creation of an organized search for near Earth objects that might impact the Earth.^[32] 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.^[33][34]

Billions and billions[link]

Sagan with a model of the Viking Lander 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 catchphrase "billions and billions". Sagan stated that he never actually used the phrase in the Cosmos series.^[35] The closest that he ever came was in the book Cosmos, where he talked of "billions upon billions":^[36]

A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars—billions upon billions of stars.

—Carl Sagan, Cosmos, chapter 1, page 3^[37]

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),^[35] made him a favorite target of comic performers, including Johnny Carson,^[38] 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 Billions and Billions, which opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catchphrase, observing that Carson was an amateur astronomer and that Carson's comic caricature often included real science.^[35]

Similarly he is also known for expressing wonderment at the vastness of space and time, as in his phrase "The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth."

Sagan units[link]

As a humorous tribute to him, a sagan has been defined as a unit of measurement equal to at least four billion, since the smallest number that may be described as billions and billions must be two billion plus two billion.^[39][40]

Social concerns[link]

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 self-destruct. 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 Cosmos, 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.^[41] 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, US 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.^[42]

Personal life and beliefs[link]

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.^[43]

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."^[44]

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."^[45]

On atheism, Sagan commented in 1981:

"An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed".^[46]

In reply to a question in 1996 about his religious beliefs, Sagan answered, "I'm agnostic."^[47] Sagan's views on religion have been interpreted as a form of pantheism comparable to Einstein's belief in Spinoza's God.^[48] 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.^[49] According to his last wife, Ann Druyan, he was not a believer:

When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me—it still sometimes happens—and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl.^[50]

In 2006, Ann Druyan edited Sagan's 1985 Glasgow Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology into a book, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, in which he elaborates on his views of divinity in the natural world.

Carl Sagan (center) speaks with CDC employees in 1988.

Sagan is also widely regarded as a freethinker or skeptic; one of his most famous quotations, in Cosmos, was, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"^[51] (called the "Sagan Standard" by some^[52]). 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, "An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof."^[53][54] 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."^[55]

Late in his life, Sagan's books elaborated on his skeptical, naturalistic view of the world. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 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 Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, 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."^[56]

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.^[57][58] 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.^[59][60][61] Not long after his death, widow Ann Druyan had gone on to preside over the board of directors of NORML, a foundation dedicated to reforming cannabis laws.^[62]

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.^[4] The name was only used internally, but Sagan was concerned that it would become a product endorsement and sent Apple a cease and desist letter. Apple complied, but engineers retaliated by changing the internal codename to "BHA" for "Butt-Head Astronomer".^[63][64] 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'."^[63][65] Sagan then sued for Apple's original use of his name and likeness, but again lost.^[66] Sagan appealed the ruling.^[66] In November 1995, an out of court settlement was reached and Apple's office of trademarks and patents released a conciliatory statement that "Apple has always had great respect for Dr. Sagan. It was never Apple's intention to cause Dr. Sagan or his family any embarrassment or concern."^[67]

Sagan briefly served as an adviser on Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.^[6] Sagan proposed that the film would suggest, rather than depict, extraterrestrial superintelligence.^[68]

Sagan and UFOs[link]

Sagan had some interest in UFO reports from at least August 3, 1952 when he wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson to ask how the U.S. would respond if flying saucers turned out to be extraterrestrial.^[69] He later had several conversations on the subject in 1964 with Jacques Vallee.^[70] 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."^[71]

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".^[70] With physicist Thornton Page, Sagan edited the lectures and discussions given at the symposium; these were published in 1972 as UFOs: A Scientific Debate. Some of Sagan's many books examine UFOs (as did one episode of Cosmos) and he claimed a religious undercurrent to the phenomenon.

Sagan again revealed his views on interstellar travel in his 1980 Cosmos series. In one of his last written works, Sagan argued that the chances of extraterrestrial spacecraft visiting Earth are vanishingly small. However, Sagan did think it plausible that Cold War concerns contributed to governments misleading their citizens about UFOs, and that "some UFO reports and analyses, and perhaps voluminous files, have been made inaccessible to the public which pays the bills ... It's time for the files to be declassified and made generally available." He cautioned against jumping to conclusions about suppressed UFO data and stressed that there was no strong evidence that aliens were visiting the Earth either in the past or present.^[72]

Death[link]

Stone dedicated to Carl Sagan in the Celebrity Path of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

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.^[73] He was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Ithaca, New York.^[74]

Posthumous recognition[link]

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 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.^[75]

The landing site of the unmanned Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station on July 5, 1997. Asteroid 2709 Sagan is named in his honor.

Sagan's son, Nick Sagan, wrote several episodes in the Star Trek franchise. In an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise 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.

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 was the first recipient of the CSSP award in 1993.^[76]

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.^[77] 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.^[78]

Beginning in 2009, a musical project known as Symphony of Science sampled several excerpts of Sagan from his series Cosmos and remixed them to electronic music. To date, the videos have received over twenty-million views worldwide on the popular user generated website Youtube, and have exposed a new generation to the interconnected grandeur of the universe as Sagan described them in his documentary series.^[79]

Awards and honors[link]

NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal

• Annual Award for Television Excellence—1981—Ohio State University—PBS series Cosmos
• 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 – Awarded by 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—The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective
• 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^[80]
• 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
• Named an honorary member of the Demosthenian Literary Society on November 10, 2011
• 2009 New Jersey Hall of Fame inductee.^[81]

Publications[link]

• 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, ISBN 1-892803-02-X, 509 pgs (note: republished in 1998 by Emerson-Adams Press)
• UFOs: A Scientific Debate, 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
• The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective, Jerome Agel coauthor, Anchor Press, 1973, ISBN 0-521-78303-8, 301 pgs
• Other Worlds. Bantam Books, 1975
• Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, 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
• Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. 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
• The Cold and the Dark: The World after Nuclear War, 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
• A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, 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
• Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. 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)
• Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, June 1997, ISBN 0-345-37918-7, 320 pgs
• The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, Carl Sagan (writer) & Ann Druyan (editor), 1985 Gifford lectures, Penguin Press HC, November 2006, ISBN 1-59420-107-2, 304 pgs

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Davidson, Keay (1999). Carl Sagan: A Life. New York: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 33–41. ISBN 0-471-25286-7. 
• Head, Tom (ed.) (2005). Conversations with Carl Sagan. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-57806-736-7. 
• Poundstone, William (1999). Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos. New York: Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 0-8050-5766-8. 
• Morrison, David (2006). "Carl Sagan: The People's Astronomer" (PDF). AmeriQuests 3 (2). http://ejournals.library.vanderbilt.edu/ameriquests/include/getdoc.php?id=402&article=93&mode=pdf. 
• Achenbach, Joel (1999). Captured by Aliens: the search for life and truth in a very large universe. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-84856-2. [Includes detailed account of Sagan's role in the search for extraterrestrial life. Lay summary]. 

External links[link]

Find more about Carl Sagan on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Images and media from Commons
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource

• The Carl Sagan Portal
• Video of skit from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson mentioning "billions and billions"
• 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 at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Carl Sagan in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization
• 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
• A Tribute to Carl Sagan: Our Place in the Universe, The Skeptics Society

v t e Carl Sagan Books Mars and the Mind of Man The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science Cosmos The Nuclear Winter: The World After Nuclear War Contact Comet A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God Media Cosmos: A Personal Voyage Contact See also SETI Pioneer plaque Voyager Golden Record Pale Blue Dot Linda Salzman Sagan Nick Sagan Ann Druyan

Wayne Keown^[2][3] (born November 29, 1949) is an American professional wrestler, and author better known by his ring name, Dutch Mantel or Dutch Mantell. He currently is semi-retired but still makes occasional wrestling appearances. He was previously with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling as a writer behind the scenes. He is also a Vietnam War veteran.^[4]

Professional wrestling career[link]

Keown debuted in 1973 as "Wayne Cowan," and later became "Dutch Mantel," but it wasn't until 1980 that he added "Dirty" to his wrestling name. He wrestled for various Southern promotions, and achieved considerable success in the National Wrestling Alliance.

Mantel was instrumental in the careers of several huge wrestling stars of the nineties, including the Blade Runners, who later went on to achieve notoriety as Sting and the Ultimate Warrior. The Undertaker and Kane both were early recipients of Mantel's astute wrestling knowledge, which served them well in their careers. Mantel also is credited with giving Steve Austin his stage surname, since Austin's real name at the time was Steve Williams (which was currently in use in wrestling by "Dr. Death" Steve Williams). Mantell originally considered giving Austin the stage names of either "Stevie Rage" or "William Stevenson III".^[4] At the time, he was a booker for Jerry Jarrett's Memphis territory.^[4]

Mantel formed several tag teams throughout his career, including The Kansas Jayhawks (with Bobby Jaggers), and The Desperados, which lasted only two months. Mantel achieved his greatest notoriety in 1979 when he and then-partner, Cowboy Frankie Lane, as Los Vaqueros Locos, sold out the 16,000-seat Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico for an unprecedented nine weeks in a row, a record that still stands. They had a unique gimmick, where they put US$1,000 on stake (all on US$1 and 50 cents coins) to the team that could defeat them.

Mantel's other notable achievement was in 1982 when he and Jerry "the King" Lawler faced off in a good guy vs. good guy series. Fans were torn between these two stalwarts of the Memphis ring wars. Mantell achieved what no other opponent could do in when Lawler was a good guy and that was to get a clear cut win over the King. Later that year after Lawler lost a loser leave town match against Bill "Superstar" Dundee, Lawler and Mantell finally mended their ways long enough to face Dundee and Buddy Landel in a Falls Don't Count in Memphis' Mid South Coliseum in front of a sold out red hot Memphis crowd. The match went a record 26 falls taking an hour and 15 minutes to accomphish. Match saw Dutch Mantell taking the pin fall over Landel.

In 1990, he worked for World Championship Wrestling (WCW) as a commentator on WCW Worldwide alongside Tony Schiavone and in 1991, WCW created a stable known as "the Desperados" consisting of Dutch Mantell, Black Bart, and Deadeye Dick. The Desperados were packaged with the gimmick of being three bumbling cowboys looking to meet up with Stan Hansen to go to WCW and become a team. Over the course of a few months, they were promoted through a series of vignettes by which they would be beaten up in saloons, searching ghost towns, and riding horses. Hansen reportedly wanted no part of the storyline and left for Japan, never to return to wrestle in North America. Without Hansen, the group were pushed into service as jobbers and were dissolved as a stable before the end of the year.

When Jim Cornette's independent wrestling promotion Smoky Mountain Wrestling opened in 1991, Mantel, joined by Bob Caudle, served as the original color commentator for the television broadcasts, and would give something of a heel perspective. He also hosted a weekly talk segment called "Down and Dirty with Dutch," where he would interview the stars of SMW. He remained with Smoky Mountain until around 1994.

In the 1990s, Mantel appeared in the World Wrestling Federation as "Uncle Zeb."^[4] He was the manager of The Blu Brothers and, later, Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw. After departing the WWF, Mantel later joined the Puerto Rican International Wrestling Association as a creative consultant, which included writing/producing and booking four hours of original TV programming per week. Mantel remained there until September 22, 2003. Mantel set a record while in Puerto Rico, in the number of hours that a single writer produced a TV wrestling show as he was responsible for four hours a week, 52 weeks a year, for a total of 208 hours a year for five years straight. His ratings also set records as his shows regularly ranged in the 12 to 15 range, with his highest being an 18.1, with a 55 share of the TV viewing audience while working for WWC in 2000. Mantel was awarded the 2002 Wrestling Observer Newsletter award of Booker of the Year for his dual achievements of drawing huge crowds to IWA big stadium shows (12 to 15 thousand fans) and for his ratings successes on Puerto Rican TV, which equaled prime time numbers, even though the show aired on weekend afternoons.

In 2003, Mantel began work behind the scenes as a writer/producer/agent for TNA Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, most recently as a full time member of the booking team, which includes Vince Russo and Jeff Jarrett. Mantel was instrumental in many successful creations for the company, most notably the TNA Knockouts division that helped to reinvigorate interest in women's wrestling in the United States. Mantel is given credit for bringing Awesome Kong to TNA at Bound for Glory 2007, and also her handler/manager, Raisha Saeed. On July 31, 2009, Mantel was released from TNA due to creative differences. Soon after, he was once again working as a writer for the IWA in Puerto Rico.^[5]

In November 2009, Reno Riggins, announced that Dutch would be joining Showtime All-Star Wrestling promotion out of Nashville as a writer and on air talent. In December 2009, Mantel released his first book, "The World According to Dutch." Mantel wrote the book in around 5 weeks, while sitting on a beach on Isla Verde, Puerto Rico, with assistance from editors Ric Gross and Mark James. In December 2010, Mantel released his second book "Tales From a Dirt Road".

On March 3, 2011, Mantel wrestled in the place of Jamie Dundee at XCW Midwest in Corydon IN. He took on local heel Lone Star, further cementing his semi-active status as a part-time wrestler.

On March 22, 2011, Mantel was the latest guest added to the WrestleMania morning WrestleReunion event in Atlanta, Georgia on April 4, 2011. The event honors Bruno Sammartino with several modern and legendary wrestlers including Carlito, Kamala, Scott Steiner, Tommy Dreamer, Christy Hemme, Bob Orton, Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik.

On March 10, 2012, Mantel was the tag team partner of "The Texas Outlaw" Thomas Mitchell at AWA Supreme Wrestling in Madison, IN with a win against "Custom Made" Eric Draven and Vito Andretti.

In wrestling[link]

• Finishing moves
  • Tennessee Chainsaw (Scoop slam piledriver)

• Wrestlers managed
  • Justin Bradshaw
  • Steve Corino
  • Eli Blu
  • Jacob Blu
  • The Undertaker
  • Sting
  • Ultimate Warrior
  • Kane

• Managers
  • Downtown Bruno^[6]

Championships and accomplishments[link]

• Dyersburg Championship Wrestling
  • DCW Heavyweight Championship (1 time)^[7]

• Georgia Championship Wrestling
  • NWA Georgia Junior Heavyweight Championship (1 time)

• Global Wrestling Federation
  • GWF Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Black Bart

• Hoosier Pro Wrestling
  • HPW Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
• Mid-South Wrestling Association
  • Mid-South Television Championship (1 time)

• Mid-South Wrestling Association
  • MSWA Tennessee Heavyweight Championship (1 time)^[7]

• NWA Mid-America / Continental Wrestling Association
  • AWA Southern Heavyweight Championship (5 times)
  • AWA Southern Tag Team Championship (3 times) – with Bill Dundee (1), Koko Ware (1), and Tommy Rich (1)
  • CWA Heavyweight Championship (3 times)
  • CWA International Heavyweight Championship (2 times)
  • CWA World Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Austin Idol
  • NWA Mid-America Heavyweight Championship (12 times)
  • NWA Mid-America Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Gypsy Joe (1), and Ken Lucas (1)
  • NWA Mid-America Television Championship (1 time)
  • NWA Southern Tag Team Championship (Mid-America version) (1 time) – with David Schultz
  • NWA Tennessee Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with John Foley

• Southeastern Championship Wrestling / Continental Championship Wrestling
  • NWA Southeastern Continental Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
  • NWA Southeastern Heavyweight Championship (Northern Division) (1 time)
  • NWA Southeastern Television Championship (1 time)

• United States Wrestling Association
  • USWA Unified World Heavyweight Championship (1 time) (last)

• World Wrestling Council
  • WWC North American Tag Team Championship (4 time) – with Wayne Farris (1), and Frankie Laine (3)
  • WWC Universal Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
  • WWC World Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Bouncer Bruno

References[link]

Notes[link]

• Stone Cold Steve Austin and Jim Ross (2003). The Stone Cold Truth. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-7434-7720-0. 

External links[link]