Overview (4) Mini Bio (1)

Astronomer, educator and author Carl Sagan was perhaps the world's greatest popularizer of science, reaching millions of people through newspapers, magazines and television broadcasts. He is well-known for his work on the PBS series Cosmos (1980), the Emmy Award and Peabody Award-winning show that became the most watched series in public-television history. This was seen by more than 500 million people in 60 countries. The accompanying book, "Cosmos" (1980), was on the New York Times bestseller list for 70 weeks and was the best-selling science book ever published in English.

Carl Edward Sagan was born November 9, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. Having taught at Cornell University since 1968, Sagan received a bachelor's degree (1955) and a master's degree (1956), both in physics, and a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics (1960), all from the University of Chicago. He taught at Harvard University in the early 1960s before coming to Cornell, where he became a full professor in 1971. Sagan played a leading role in NASA's Mariner, Viking, Voyager and Galileo expeditions to other planets. He received NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and twice for Distinguished Public Service and the NASA Apollo Achievement Award. His research focused on topics such as the greenhouse effect on Venus; windblown dust as an explanation for the seasonal changes on Mars; organic aerosols on Titan, Saturn's moon; the long-term environmental consequences of nuclear war; and the origin of life on Earth. A pioneer in the field of exobiology, he continued to teach graduate and undergraduate students in courses in astronomy and space sciences and in critical thinking at Cornell.

The breadth of his interests were made evident in October 1994, at a Cornell-sponsored symposium in honor of Sagan's 60th birthday. The two-day event featured speakers in areas of planetary exploration, life in the cosmos, science education, public policy and government regulation of science and the environment -- all fields in which Sagan had worked or had a strong interest. Sagan was the recipient of numerous awards in addition to his NASA recognition. He received 22 honorary degrees from American colleges and universities for his contributions to science, literature, education and the preservation of the environment and many awards for his work on the long-term consequences of nuclear war and reversing the nuclear arms race. Among his other awards were: the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society; the Explorers Club 75th Anniversary Award; the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal of the Soviet Cosmonauts Federation and the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society. He also was the 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".

Sagan was elected chairman of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, president of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union and chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For 12 years, he was editor of Icarus, the leading professional journal devoted to planetary research. He was co-founder of the Planetary Society, a 100,000-member organization and the largest space-interest group in the world. The society supports major research programs in the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the investigation of near-Earth asteroids and, with the French and Russian space agencies, the development and testing of balloon and mobile robotic exploration of Mars. Sagan also was Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and was contributing editor of Parade magazine, where he published many articles about science and about the disease that he battled for the last two years of his life.

On December 20, 1996, Carl Sagan died at age 62 of pneumonia at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. He was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Marcos Eduardo Acosta Aldrete

He mostly wore turtlenecks with suit coats.

Received his bachelor's degree (1955) and his master's degree (1956), both in physics, from the University of Chicago.

Received his Ph.D degree (Doctor of Philosophy) in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Chicago (1960).

Suffered from a rare blood disorder that led to cancer and ultimately his death.

Named 1981 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association "in recognition of his work as an educator, skeptic, activist, and populizer of science".

Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 537-540. New York: Oxford University Press (2002).

He was elected into the 2009 New Jersey Hall of Fame for his services in the Enterprise category.

Attended and graduated from Bahway High School from Bahway, New Jersey (1951).

He has an Erds-Bacon-Sabbath number of 9, which is among the lowest on the planet.

Following his death, he was interred at Lakeview Cemetery in Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York.

Grand-Cross of the Ancient, Most Noble and Enlightened Military Order of Saint James of the Sword, of the Scientific, Literary and Artistic Merit of Portugal (23 November 1998).

Billions upon billions...

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

[About religion] "I don't want to believe. I want to know."

The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.

"I never said it. Honest." - The opening line in his last book called "Billions and Billions." He was right -- the phrase was coined by Johnny Carson imitating him.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion." "The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.

To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. [Cosmos, PBS TV, 23 November 1980]

When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions. That is the heart of science.

[Cosmos, PBS TV, 21 December 1980] The only sacred truth is that there are no sacred truths.

[About "Blue Pale Dot", a photo taken by space probe Voyager I in 14 February 1990] Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

[Cosmos, PBS TV, 21 December 1980] We are one planet.

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Carl Sagan - Biography - IMDb