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, (' for his extraordinary contributions to the development of planetary science…As a scientist trained in both astronomy and biology, Dr. Sagan received the NASA medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and (twice) for Distinguished Public Service, as well as the NASA Apollo Achievement Award.

As we looked deeply into each other's eyes, it was with a shared conviction that our wondrous life together was ending forever.'įor his work, Dr.

Even at this moment when anyone would be forgiven for turning away from the reality of our situation, Carl was unflinching. For Carl, what mattered most was what was true, not merely what would make us feel better. Ann Druyan, in the epilogue to Sagan's last book, Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (published posthumously in 1997), gives a moving account of Carl's last days: ' Contrary to the fantasies of the fundamentalists, there was no deathbed conversion, no last minute refuge taken in a comforting vision of a heaven or an afterlife. Sagan played a leading role in NASA's Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo expeditions to other planets. The film came out after Sagan's death, following a 2-year struggle with a bone marrow disease.

With his wife, Ann Druyan, he was co-producer of the popular motion picture, ' Contact,' which featured a feminist, atheist protagonist played by Jodie Foster (1997). Sagan was author, co-author or editor of 20 books, including The Dragons of Eden (1977), which won a Pulitzer, Pale Blue Dot (1995) and The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark (1996), his hardest-hitting on religion. A book of the same title came out in 1980, and was on The New York Times bestseller list for 7 weeks. A great popularizer of science, Sagan produced the PBS series, ' Cosmos,' which was Emmy and Peabody award-winning, and was watched by 500 million people in 60 countries. He became professor of astronomy and space science and director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University, and co-founder of the Planetary Society.

After earning bachelor and master's degrees at Cornell, Sagan earned a double doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1960. In 1934, scientist Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan