   #copyright

Carl Sagan

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Astronomers and
physicists

   CAPTION: Carl Sagan

   Born November 9, 1934
        Brooklyn, New York
   Died December 20, 1996
        Seattle, Washington

   Carl Edward Sagan ( November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an
   American astronomer, astrobiologist, and highly successful science
   popularizer. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for
   Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence ( SETI). He is world-famous for writing
   popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the
   award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which
   was the most-watched PBS program until Ken Burns' The Civil War in
   1990. A book to accompany the program was also published. He also wrote
   the novel Contact, the basis for the 1997 film of the same name
   starring Jodie Foster. During his lifetime, Sagan published more than
   600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author,
   or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he frequently advocated
   scientific skepticism, humanism, and the scientific method.

Education and scientific career

   Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Jewish; his
   father, Sam Sagan, was a garment worker and his mother, Rachel Molly
   Gruber, was a housewife. Carl was named in honour of Rachel's
   biological mother, Chaiya/ Clara, "the mother she never knew," in
   Sagan's words. Sagan graduated from Rahway ( NJ) High School in 1951.
   He attended the University of Chicago, where he received a bachelor's
   degree (1955) and a master's degree (1956) in physics, before earning
   his doctorate (1960) in astronomy and astrophysics. During his time as
   an undergraduate, Sagan spent some time working in the laboratory of
   the geneticist H. J. Muller. From 1962 to 1968, he worked at the
   Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

   Sagan taught at Harvard University until 1968, when he moved to Cornell
   University. He became a full professor at Cornell in 1971 and directed
   the Laboratory for Planetary Studies there. From 1972 to 1981 he was
   Associate Director of the Centre for Radio Physics and Space Research
   at Cornell.

   Sagan was a leader in the U.S. space program since its inception and
   worked as an adviser to NASA since the 1950s. (One of his many duties
   during his tenure at the space agency included briefing the Apollo
   astronauts before their flights to the Moon.) Sagan contributed to most
   of the unmanned missions that explored the solar system, placing
   experiments on many robotic space expeditions. He conceived the idea of
   adding an unalterable and universal message on spacecraft destined to
   leave the solar system that could be understood by any extraterrestrial
   intelligence that might find it. Sagan assembled the first physical
   message that was sent into space: a gold- anodized plaque, attached to
   the space probe Pioneer 10, launched in 1972. Pioneer 11, also
   containing the plaque, was launched the following year. He continued to
   refine his designs and the most elaborate such message he helped to
   develop and assemble was the Voyager Golden Record that was sent out
   with the Voyager space probes in 1977.

   Sagan taught at Cornell a course on critical thinking until his death
   in 1996 from a rare bone marrow disease. The course had only a limited
   number of seats, although hundreds of students tried to attend. He
   chose about 20 students who were allowed to enroll by reading huge
   piles of application essays. The course was discontinued after his
   death.

Scientific achievements

   Sagan was central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of
   the planet Venus. In the early 1960s, no one knew for certain the basic
   conditions of Venus' surface and Sagan listed the possibilities in a
   report (which were later depicted for popularization in a Time-Life
   book, Planets) — his own view was that the planet was dry and very hot,
   as opposed to the balmy paradise others had imagined. He had
   investigated radio emissions from Venus and concluded that there was a
   surface temperature of 500°C (900°F). As a visiting scientist to NASA's
   Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he contributed to the first Mariner missions
   to Venus, working on the design and management of the project. Mariner
   2 confirmed his views on the conditions of Venus in 1962.

   Sagan was among the first to hypothesize that Saturn's moon Titan and
   Jupiter's moon Europa may possess oceans (a subsurface ocean, in the
   case of Europa) or lakes, thus making the hypothesized water ocean on
   Europa potentially habitable for life. Europa's subsurface ocean was
   later indirectly confirmed by the spacecraft Galileo. Sagan also helped
   solve the mystery of the reddish haze seen on Titan, revealing that it
   is composed of complex organic molecules constantly raining down to the
   moon's surface.

   He furthered insights regarding the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter as
   well as seasonal changes on Mars. Sagan established that the atmosphere
   of Venus is extremely hot and dense with crushing pressures. He also
   perceived global warming as a growing, man-made danger and likened it
   to the natural development of Venus into a hot, life-hostile planet
   through greenhouse gasses. Sagan speculated (along with his Cornell
   colleague Edwin Ernest Salpeter) about life in Jupiter's clouds, given
   the planet's dense atmospheric composition rich in organic molecules.
   He studied the observed colour variations on Mars’ surface, concluding
   that they were not seasonal or vegetation changes as most believed, but
   shifts in surface dust caused by windstorms.

   Sagan is best known, however, for his research on the possibilities of
   extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the
   production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation.

Scientific advocacy

   Planetary Society members at the organization's founding. Carl Sagan
   seated, right
   Enlarge
   Planetary Society members at the organization's founding. Carl Sagan
   seated, right

   Sagan was a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life. He urged
   the scientific community to listen with radio telescopes for signals
   from intelligent extraterrestrial lifeforms. So persuasive was he that
   by 1982, he was able to get a petition advocating SETI published in the
   journal Science, signed by 70 scientists, including seven Nobel Prize
   winners. This was a tremendous turnaround in the respectability of this
   controversial field. Sagan also advocated sending probes to explore the
   solar system.

   He was editor-in-chief of Icarus (a professional journal concerning
   planetary research) for 12 years. He cofounded the Planetary Society,
   the largest space-interest group in the world, with over 100,000
   members in more than 140 countries, and was a member of the SETI
   Institute Board of Trustees. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division
   for Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society, as
   President of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union,
   and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association
   for the Advancement of Science.

   Sagan helped Dr. Frank Drake write the Arecibo message, a radio message
   beamed into space from the Arecibo radio telescope on November 16,
   1974, aimed at informing extraterrestrials about Earth.

   At the height of the Cold War, Sagan deliberately ignored the
   "extraordinary claims" test for evidence when a mathematical climate
   model suggested that a substantial nuclear exchange could upset the
   delicate balance of life on Earth. He was the last of five authors —
   the "S" of the "TTAPS" report as the research paper came to be known.
   He eventually co-authored the scientific paper that predicted nuclear
   winter would follow nuclear war. He also co-authored the book A Path
   Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, a
   comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of nuclear winter.

   Sagan famously predicted on ABC's Nightline in 1991 that smoky oil
   fires in Kuwait (set by Saddam Hussein's army during the first Gulf
   War) would cause a worldwide ecological disaster of black clouds
   resulting in global cooling. Retired atmospheric physicist and climate
   change skeptic Fred Singer dismissed Sagan's prediction as nonsense,
   predicting that the smoke would dissipate in a matter of days. In his
   book The Demon-Haunted World (see below), Sagan gave a list of errors
   he had made (including his predictions about the effects of the Kuwaiti
   oil fires) as an example of how science is tentative, a self-correcting
   process.

   Sagan is also known for being involved as a researcher in Project A119,
   a secret US Air Force operation whose purpose was to explode an atomic
   bomb on Earth's Moon.

Social concerns

   Sagan believed that the Drake equation suggested that a large number of
   extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of
   evidence of such civilizations (the Fermi paradox) suggests that
   technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves rather quickly.
   This stimulated his interest in identifying and publicizing ways that
   humanity could destroy itself, with the hope of avoiding such a
   cataclysm and eventually becoming a spacefaring species.

   Sagan's deep concern regarding the potential destruction of human
   civilization in a nuclear holocaust had been conveyed in a memorable
   cinematic sequence in the final episode of Cosmos, called "Who Speaks
   for Earth?". Following his marriage to novelist Ann Druyan (his third
   wife) in June 1981, Sagan became more politically active — particularly
   in regard to the escalation of the nuclear arms race under President
   Ronald Reagan.

   In March of 1983, hoping to blunt the momentum of the Nuclear freeze
   movement, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative — a
   multi-billion dollar project to develop a comprehensive defense against
   attack by nuclear missiles, which was quickly dubbed the "Star Wars"
   program. Sagan spoke out against the project, arguing that it was
   technically impossible to develop a system with the level of perfection
   required, and far more expensive to build than for an enemy to defeat
   through decoys and other means — and that its construction would
   seriously destabilize the nuclear balance between the United States and
   the Soviet Union, making further progress toward nuclear disarmament
   impossible.

   When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared a unilateral moratorium
   on the testing of nuclear weapons, which would begin on August 6, 1985
   — the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima — the Reagan
   administration dismissed the dramatic move as nothing more than
   propaganda, and refused to follow suit. In response, American
   anti-nuclear and peace activists staged a series of protest actions at
   the Nevada Test Site, beginning on Easter Sunday of 1986 and continuing
   through 1987. Hundreds of people (including such notable figures as
   Daniel Ellsberg and Martin Sheen) engaged in acts of civil disobedience
   and were arrested. Carl Sagan, who had been arrested for participating
   in an anti-war protest during the Vietnam War, was himself arrested on
   two separate occasions as he climbed over a chain-link fence at the
   Test Site.

   Carl Sagan was an avid user of marijuana, although he never admitted
   this publicly during his life. Under the pseudonym "Mr. X," he wrote an
   essay concerning cannabis smoking in the 1971 book Marihuana
   Reconsidered, whose editor was Lester Grinspoon. In his essay, Sagan
   commented that marijuana encouraged some of his works and enhanced
   experiences. After Sagan's death, Grinspoon disclosed this to Sagan's
   biographer, Keay Davidson. When the biography, entitled Carl Sagan: A
   Life, was published in 1999, the marijuana exposure stirred some media
   attention.

Popularization of science

   Sagan's capability to convey his ideas allowed many people to better
   understand the cosmos. He delivered the 1977/1978 Christmas Lectures
   for Young People at the Royal Institution. He hosted and, with Ann
   Druyan, co-wrote and co-produced the highly popular thirteen-part PBS
   television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (modeled on Jacob
   Bronowski's The Ascent of Man).
   Sagan with a model of the Viking Lander probes which would land on
   Mars. Sagan examined possible landing sites for Viking along with Mike
   Carr and Hal Masursky.
   Enlarge
   Sagan with a model of the Viking Lander probes which would land on
   Mars. Sagan examined possible landing sites for Viking along with Mike
   Carr and Hal Masursky.

   Cosmos covered a wide range of scientific subjects including the origin
   of life and a perspective of our place in the universe. The series was
   first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980. It won an
   Emmy and a Peabody Award; according to the NASA Office of Space
   Science, it has been since broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen
   by over 600 million people.

   Sagan also wrote books to popularize science, such as Cosmos, which
   reflected and expanded upon some of the themes of A Personal Voyage,
   and became the best-selling science book ever published in English, The
   Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence,
   which won a Pulitzer Prize, and Broca's Brain: Reflections on the
   Romance of Science. Sagan also wrote the best-selling science fiction
   novel Contact, but did not live to see the book's 1997 motion picture
   adaptation, which starred Jodie Foster and won the 1998 Hugo Award.

   From Cosmos and his frequent appearances on The Tonight Show, Sagan
   became associated with the catch phrase "billions and billions." (He
   never actually used that phrase in Cosmos, but his distinctive delivery
   and frequent use of billions (with noted emphasis on the opening "b")
   made this a favorite phrase of Johnny Carson, Gary Kroeger, Mike Myers,
   Bronson Pinchot, Harry Shearer and others, doing many affectionate
   impressions of him. Sagan took this in good humor, and his final book
   was entitled Billions and Billions (see below) and opened with a
   tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catch phrase.) A humorous unit of
   measurement, the Sagan, has now been coined to stand for any count of
   at least 4,000,000,000.

   He wrote a sequel to Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human
   Future in Space, which was selected as a notable book of 1995 by The
   New York Times. Carl Sagan also wrote an introduction for the
   bestselling book by Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time.

   Sagan presents a speculation concerning the origin of the swastika
   symbol in his book, Comet. Sagan hypothesized that a comet approached
   so close to Earth in antiquity that the jets of gas streaming out of it
   were visible, bent by the comet's rotation. The book Comet reproduces
   an ancient Chinese manuscript that shows comet tail varieties; most are
   variations on simple comet tails, but the last shows the comet nucleus
   with four bent arms extending from it, showing a swastika.

   Sagan caused mixed reactions among other professional scientists. On
   the one hand, there was general support for his popularization of
   science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among the
   general public, and his positions in favour of scientific skepticism
   and against pseudoscience; most notably his thorough debunking of the
   book Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky. On the other hand,
   there was some unease that the public would misunderstand some of the
   personal positions and interests that Sagan took as being part of the
   scientific consensus. Sagan's arguments against Velikovsky's
   catastrophism have been criticized by some of his colleagues. Robert
   Jastrow of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies wrote: "Professor
   Sagan's calculations, in effect, ignore the law of gravity. Here, Dr.
   Velikovsky was the better astronomer."

   Late in his life, Sagan's books developed his skeptical, naturalistic
   view of the world. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in
   the Dark, he presented tools for testing arguments and detecting
   fallacious or fraudulent ones, essentially advocating wide use of
   critical thinking and the scientific method. The compilation, Billions
   and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the
   Millennium, published in 1997 after Sagan's death, contains essays
   written by Sagan, such as his views on abortion, and his widow Ann
   Druyan's account of his death as a skeptic, agnostic, and freethinker.

   In 2006, Ann Druyan edited Sagan's 1985 Gifford Lectures in Natural
   Theology into a new book, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A
   Personal View of the Search for God, in which he elaborates on his
   views of divinity in the natural world.

Personality

   In 1966, Sagan was asked to contribute an interview about the
   possibility of extraterrestrials to a proposed introduction to the film
   2001: A Space Odyssey. According to an unsourced anecdote in The
   Independent, Sagan "responded by saying that he wanted editorial
   control and a percentage of the film's takings, which was rejected."

   In 1994, Apple Computer began developing the Power Macintosh 7100. They
   chose the internal code name "Carl Sagan," the in-joke being that the
   mid-range PowerMac 7100 would make Apple "billions and billions".
   Though the project name was strictly internal and never used in public
   marketing, when Sagan learned of this internal usage he sued Apple
   Computer to use a different project name. Other projects had names like
   " Cold fusion" and " Piltdown Man", and he was displeased at being
   associated with what he considered pseudoscience. Though Sagan lost the
   suit, Apple engineers complied with his demands anyway, renaming the
   project "BHA" (for Butt-Head Astronomer). Sagan promptly sued Apple for
   libel over the new name, claiming that it subjected him to contempt and
   ridicule, but lost this lawsuit as well. Still, the 7100 saw another
   name change: it was finally referred to internally as "LAW" (Lawyers
   Are Wimps).

   Sagan wrote frequently about religion and the relationship between
   religion and science, observing statements such as: "The idea that God
   is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky
   and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,'
   one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then
   clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it
   does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." Sagan is also
   widely regarded as a freethinker or skeptic; one of his most famous
   quotations (as seen in Cosmos) was "Extraordinary claims require
   extraordinary evidence." (This was actually based on a nearly identical
   earlier quote by fellow CSICOP founder Marcello Truzzi "Extraordinary
   claims require extraordinary proof." The quote is also known, under
   different wording, as the principle of Laplace — attributed to
   Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace (March 23, 1749 – March 5, 1827), a
   French mathematician and astronomer: "The weight of evidence for an
   extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.")

   Sagan married three times: the famous biologist, Lynn Margulis (mother
   of Dorion Sagan and Jeremy Sagan) in 1957; artist Linda Salzman (mother
   of Nick Sagan) in 1968; and author Ann Druyan (mother of Sasha and Sam)
   in 1981, to whom he remained married until his death in 1996.

   Isaac Asimov described Sagan as one of the only two people he ever met
   who were just plain smarter than Asimov himself. The other was computer
   scientist and expert on artificial intelligence, Marvin Minsky.

Sagan and UFOs

   Sagan had some interest in UFO reports from at least 1964, when he had
   several conversations on the subject with Jacques Vallee (Westrum 37).
   Though quite skeptical of any extraordinary answer to the UFO question,
   Sagan thought that science should study the phenomenon, at least
   because there was widespread public interest in UFO reports.

   Stuart Appelle notes that Sagan "wrote frequently on what he perceived
   as the logical and empirical fallacies regarding UFOs and the abduction
   experience. Sagan rejected an extraterrestrial explanation for the
   phenomenon but felt there were both empirical and pedagogical benefits
   for examining UFO reports and that the subject was, therefore, a
   legitimate topic of study" (Appelle 22).

   In 1966, Sagan was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project
   Blue Book. The committee concluded that the U.S. Air Force's Project
   Blue Book had been lacking as a scientific study, and recommended a
   university-based project to give the UFO phenomenon closer scientific
   scrutiny. The Condon Committee (1966-1968), led by physicist Edward
   Condon, and their still-controversial final report, formally concluded
   that there was nothing anomalous about UFO reports.

   Ron Westrum writes that "The high point of Sagan's treatment of the UFO
   question was the AAAS's symposium in 1969. A wide range of educated
   opinions on the subject were offered by participants, including not
   only proponents as James McDonald and J. Allen Hynek but also skeptics
   like astronomers William Hartmann and Donald Menzel. The roster of
   speakers was balanced, and it is to Sagan's credit that this event was
   presented in spite of pressure from Edward Condon" (Westrum 37-38).
   With physicist Thornton Page, Sagan edited the lectures and discussions
   given at the symposium; these were published in 1972 as UFO's: A
   Scientific Debate.

   Jerome Clark writes that Sagan's perspective on UFO's irked Condon:
   "... though a skeptic, [Sagan] was too soft on UFOs for Condon's taste.
   In 1971, he considered blackballing Sagan from the prestigious Cosmos
   Club" (Clark 603).

   Some of Sagan's many books examine UFOs (as did one episode of Cosmos)
   and he recognized a religious undercurrent to the phenomenon. However,
   Westrum writes that "Sagan spent very little time researching UFOs ...
   he thought that little evidence existed to show that the UFO phenomenon
   represented alien spacecraft and that the motivation for interpreting
   UFO observations as spacecraft was emotional" (Westrum 37).

   It is sometimes noted that Sagan's generally skeptical attitude to UFOs
   conflicted sharply with his views in a 1966 book he wrote with Russian
   astronomer and astrophysicist I.S. Shklovskii, Intelligent Life in the
   Universe. Here Sagan instead argued that technologically advanced alien
   civilizations were common and he considered it very probable that Earth
   had been visited many times in the past. Yet only a few years later in
   UFO's: A Scientific Debate, Sagan was now highly skeptical of
   interstellar visitation. As to the physical possibility of interstellar
   travel, Sagan brought up the proposed Bussard ramjet as an interstellar
   vehicle. While not terribly practical, Sagan thought such proposed
   propulsion systems were nevertheless important because they
   demonstrated that there were conceivable ways of accomplishing
   interstellar travel "without bumping into fundamental physical
   constraints. And this suggests that it is premature to say that
   interstellar space flight is out of the question." But to this Sagan
   added, "I believe the numbers work out in such a way that UFO's as
   interstellar vehicles is extremely unlikely, but I think it is an
   equally bad mistake to say that interstellar space flight is
   impossible."

   Sagan again revealed his views on interstellar travel in his 1980
   Cosmos series. He rejected the idea that UFOs are visiting Earth,
   maintaining that the chances any alien spacecraft would visit the Earth
   are vanishingly small. However, in another episode he said the stars
   would "beckon" to humanity, and described the Bussard ramjet as one way
   humans might achieve interstellar travel. In one of his last written
   works, Sagan again claimed that there was no evidence that aliens have
   actually visited the Earth, either in the past or present (Sagan, 1996:
   81-96, 99-104).

Legacy

   After a long and difficult fight with myelodysplasia, Sagan died of
   pneumonia at the age of 62 on December 20, 1996, at the Fred Hutchinson
   Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, Washington. Sagan was a significant
   figure, and his supporters credit his importance to his popularization
   of the natural sciences, opposing both restraints on science and
   reactionary applications of science, defending democratic traditions,
   resisting nationalism, defending humanism, and arguing against
   geocentric and anthropocentric views.

   The landing site of the unmanned Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was renamed
   the Carl Sagan Memorial Station on July 5, 1997. Asteroid 2709 Sagan is
   also named in his honour.

   The 1997 movie Contact (see above), based on Sagan's novel of the same
   name and finished after his death, ends with the dedication "For Carl."

   On November 9, 2001, on what would have been Sagan’s 67th birthday, the
   NASA Ames Research Centre dedicated the site for the Carl Sagan Centre
   for the Study of Life in the Cosmos. "Carl was an incredible visionary,
   and now his legacy can be preserved and advanced by a 21st century
   research and education laboratory committed to enhancing our
   understanding of life in the universe and furthering the cause of space
   exploration for all time," said NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. Ann
   Druyan was at the centre as it opened its doors on October 22, 2006.

   Sagan's son, Nick Sagan, wrote several episodes in the Star Trek
   franchise. In an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled "Terra
   Prime," a quick shot is shown of the relic rover Sojourner, part of the
   Mars Pathfinder mission, placed by a historical marker at Carl Sagan
   Memorial Station on the Martian surface. The marker displays a quote
   from Sagan: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there,
   and I wish I was with you."

   Sagan's student, Steve Squyres, would lead the team that landed the
   Spirit Rover and Opportunity Rover successfully on Mars in 2004.

Awards and medals

     * Annual Award for Television Excellence - 1981 - Ohio State
       University - PBS series Cosmos
     * Apollo Achievement Award - National Aeronautics and Space
       Administration
     * Chicken Little Honorable Mention - 1991 - National Anxiety Centre;
       a dubious achievement award from an organization which is skeptical
       about many pessimistic appraisals of the state of the environment
     * NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal - National Aeronautics and
       Space Administration (twice)
     * Emmy - Outstanding Individual Achievement - 1981 - PBS series
       Cosmos
     * Emmy - Outstanding Informational Series - 1981 - PBS series Cosmos
     * Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal - National Aeronautics and
       Space Administration
     * Helen Caldicott Leadership Award - Women's Action for Nuclear
       Disarmament
     * Homer Award - 1997 - Contact
     * Hugo Award - 1981 - Cosmos
     * Humanist of the Year - 1981 - Awarded by the American Humanist
       Association
     * In Praise of Reason Award - 1987 - Committee for the Scientific
       Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
     * Isaac Asimov Award - 1994 - Committee for the Scientific
       Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
     * John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award - American Astronautical Society
     * John W. Campbell Memorial Award - 1974 - Cosmic Connection: An
       Extraterrestrial Perspective
     * Joseph Priestley Award - "For distinguished contributions to the
       welfare of mankind"
     * Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific -
       1974
     * Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal - Awarded by the Soviet Cosmonauts
       Federation
     * Locus Award 1986 - Contact
     * Lowell Thomas Award - Explorers Club - 75th Anniversary
     * Masursky Award - American Astronomical Society
     * Oersted Medal - 1990 - American Association of Physics Teachers
     * Peabody Award - 1980 - PBS series Cosmos
     * Prix Galbert - The international prize of Astronautics
     * Public Welfare Medal - 1994 - National Academy of Sciences
     * Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction - 1978 - The Dragons of Eden
     * SF Chronicle Award - 1998 - Contact
     * Carl Sagan Memorial Award - Named in his honour
     * Named 99th " Greatest American" on the June 5, 2005 "Greatest
       American" show on the Discovery Channel.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
