Carl Sagan

(1934 - 1996)

Although his research alone would be cause for renown, Sagan is remembered by most people as one of the great popularizers of science. His newspaper articles, magazine pieces (particularly those for "Parade Magazine"), books, and television broadcasts reached millions, and made science accessible to mass audiences. "Cosmos," a television series he made for PBS, became the most popular science show in history.  Among his nearly two-dozen books were "The Dragons of Eden,"  "Pale Blue Dot," "Cosmos," "The Demon-Haunted World," and a fictional piece, "Contact." The last was produced as a theatrical motion picture in 1997 starring Jodie Foster, and enjoyed both critical and popular acclaim.

Among many awards for his lifetime work, Sagan received the NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and for Distinguished Public Service twice, as well as the NASA Apollo Achievement Award. He was given the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society, the Explorers Club 75th Anniversary Award, and the Konstantin Tsiolokovsky Medal of the Soviet Cosmonautics Federation, and the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society. 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."

The Mars Pathfinder Lander was renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station in his memory, and an asteroid, Asteroid 2709 Sagan, is named for him.

Sagan was inextricably tied to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.  In the mid-1960s, he initiated the translation and expansion of a Russian book on space and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.  The resulting work, "Intelligent Life in the Universe" (Shklovskii and Sagan) was a seminal volume in what eventually became a burgeoning SETI literature.  Sagan was also a major participant in early SETI meetings, including the first international SETI conference held in the Soviet Union in 1971, and wrote many papers on this subject.

In addition to these theoretical efforts, Sagan was an active SETI investigator.  His experiments ranged from the nearby to the distant. In the 1970s, when the Pioneer space probes were being readied for their mission to the outer solar system and beyond, NASA called on Carl Sagan to design a "calling card" – a pictorial plaque – that could be fastened to the craft in case the Pioneers were ever retrieved by beings from other worlds.  Five years later, he helped design an improved message to putative extraterrestrials: a record with music and pictures that was attached to the Voyager probes.  He also joined with Frank Drake in using the Arecibo radio telescope to search for deliberate signals from nearby galaxies.

Sagan was the co-founder of the Planetary Society, and, at the time of his death, a member of the Board of Directors of the SETI Institute.  He was optimistic that we will eventually find evidence of other technologically sophisticated beings.  Sagan estimated that our Galaxy is home to a million civilizations.  And what would happen if our SETI searches succeed and we detect one of these?  The consequences could be staggering, as Sagan realized.  "Imagine if one day the contents of 100,000 books of a [highly advanced] civilization suddenly fluttered through the receivers of our telescopes… The rewards of success are inestimable."

Some day our instruments may, indeed, detect the faint call of distant worlds.  Carl Sagan would have loved to hear the phone ring.

(Born in 1934, Sagan died December 20, 1996)