Carl Sagan

Lore & Background

Carl Sagan was born on November 9, 1934, in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of New York City's Brooklyn borough. His mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a housewife; his father, Samuel Sagan, was a Ukrainian-born garment worker. Sagan described his family as Reform Jews. He traced his analytical inclinations to his mother and his sense of wonder to his father. A defining moment in his childhood was visiting the 1939 New York World's Fair, where exhibits on technology and a time capsule burial sparked his curiosity. He later recalled that learning the stars were suns very far away opened up the scale of the universe to him, an experience he described as a kind of religious experience.

Reader's Guide

Carl Sagan's significance lies in his dual role as a scientist and communicator. He played an active role in NASA's Mariner, Viking, and Voyager programs, and proposed the Pale Blue Dot photograph taken by Voyager 1. He co-wrote and narrated the 1980 documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which won two Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award, and was seen by at least 500 million people in 60 countries. His book Cosmos became the bestselling science book to date. Sagan also contributed to the Arecibo message, Pioneer plaques, and Voyager Golden Record, and promoted skepticism and the scientific method in works like The Demon-Haunted World. His legacy includes founding the Planetary Society and winning the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for The Dragons of Eden.

Did You Know?

• Sagan won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his book The Dragons of Eden.
• He proposed the Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth taken by Voyager 1.
• He was a founding member and first president of the Planetary Society.
• The phrase 'Billions and billions' was attributed to him, although he never said it.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Smithsonian magazine, May 1978, pp. 43, 44. Quoted in Awake! magazine, 1978, 8/22." — Carl Sagan "We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster." — Carl Sagan "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." — Carl Sagan "Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world." — Carl Sagan