American astronomer, astrophysicist, exobiologist, educator, and popular celebrity. As host of the TV series and the author of the book, “Cosmos,” he inspired a generation with his enthusiastic lectures, books and documentaries about space and life. His awards include a Pulitzer Prize, several medals from NASA, the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society, the Public Welfare Medal (the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences), and over 20 honorary degrees.
Sagan was a noted authority on planetary atmospheres and surfaces, and he became a leading consultant to NASA’s space exploration program. His book “Cosmos” was a best seller for over a year. The TV series was seen by more than 500 million people in 60 countries. In 1978, he won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for “The Dragons of Eden,” his book about the evolution of human intelligence. He was co-producer of the 1997 movie “Contact” based on his novel by the same name. A prolific writer, he wrote, co-wrote or edited over 20 books and hundreds of articles. Among his other contributions, he is credited with identifying the boiling hot nature of Venus and the dust storms of Mars. Sagan was a keen proponent of the idea that intelligent life might be found in the universe but dismissed the UFO craze, lost continents and astrology as “pseudoscientific twaddle.”
Sagan was born to a Russian immigrant father and an American mother. As a child he gazed with awe at the heavens and speculated on the existence of life beyond earth. At age 12 he told his grandfather he wanted to be an astronomer and vowed to be on a university faculty so he could support himself in his chosen field. Winning a scholarship at age 16 to the University of Chicago, he graduated with a baccalaureate degree three years later. He subsequently earned a second bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in physics. In 1960, now age 25, he received his doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics from University of Chicago and landed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley. Rising quickly through the ranks of academia, he spent a year on the faculty of Stanford University, after which he joined the staff of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. He followed that with an assignment as assistant professor in astronomy at Harvard. In 1968, he was named director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell. Three years later he became a full professor.
Charming, brilliant and successful, he was not above smoking pot and advocating its use for both brainstorming and great sex. He married three times, first in 1957 to microbiologist Lynn Margulis; they divorced in 1963. In 1968 he married artist/screenwriter Linda Salzman and that marriage too ended in divorce. He met Ann Druyan, his third wife, in 1974 at a dinner party. They married in 1981, and she collaborated with him on various books and projects. From the three marriages, he had five children.
In 1994 he was diagnosed with myelodysplasia, a disease of the bone marrow. In 1995 he underwent chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant donated by his sister. He died of pneumonia on December 20, 1996 in Seattle, WA.
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