- Person
- Carl Sagan
- Lived
- 1934–1996
- Field
- Astronomy, planetary science
- From
- American
The story
By the late 1970s Carl Sagan was already a well-known Cornell astronomer and Pulitzer Prize winner. He then took on his greatest project in public education. With Ann Druyan and the astronomer Steven Soter he wrote Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, a 13-part series that he also presented. It was produced in 1978 and 1979 by his own company and the Los Angeles public station KCET, with the BBC as a co-producer, on a budget of about $6.3 million.
The series opened with a Ship of the Imagination journeying from distant galaxies to Earth, then moved through Eratosthenes measuring the planet, a recreation of the ancient Library of Alexandria, the birth and death of stars, the evolution of life and the search for other civilisations. Sagan explained matter by cutting into an apple pie and taught a class of children in his childhood neighbourhood of Brooklyn. Pioneering special effects let him appear to walk through model landscapes, and the music of Vangelis gave the series its sound. Its final episode, “Who Speaks for Earth?”, carried a plea to cherish life and avoid nuclear war.
Cosmos was first broadcast on PBS in 1980 and became the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until Ken Burns's The Civil War in 1990. It won two Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award and, according to the Planetary Society, has been seen by 500 million people in 60 countries. Sagan later recorded updates for new versions of the series, discussing discoveries made since its first broadcast.
The companion book became the best-selling science book ever published in English up to that time, and the Library of Congress later named Cosmos one of the Books That Shaped America. The series offered an optimistic view of humanity's place in the universe, summed up in Sagan's line that “we are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
Druyan carried the project forward after his death. In 2014 she and Seth MacFarlane produced Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, whom Sagan had encouraged as a teenager. The original series is still regarded as a turning point for science on television.
Why it matters
Cosmos introduced hundreds of millions of people to science and set the model for science television that later presenters still follow.
About Carl Sagan
Brooklyn-born astronomer who explained the Venus greenhouse, helped send humanity’s messages on Pioneer and Voyager, and taught Cosmos viewers worldwide to look at the universe with wonder and doubt.
More about Carl Sagan
- Carl Sagan co-founded the Planetary SocietyIn 1980 Carl Sagan co-founded the Planetary Society and became its first president, building a public movement to support the exploration of space.
- Carl Sagan explained why Venus is a furnaceIn the early 1960s Carl Sagan argued from radio data that Venus's surface was about 500 °C because of a greenhouse effect, a conclusion confirmed by Mariner 2 in 1962.
- Carl Sagan inspired a generation of science communicatorsCarl Sagan invited a 17-year-old Neil deGrasse Tyson to Cornell and taught Bill Nye astronomy, inspiring a generation of scientists and science popularisers.
- Carl Sagan showed Mars's changing colours were dustMany astronomers thought seasonal colour changes on Mars were spreading vegetation. Carl Sagan showed they were shifts in surface dust driven by windstorms.
- Carl Sagan asked Voyager to photograph the Pale Blue DotAt Carl Sagan's urging, Voyager 1 turned its camera homeward on February 14, 1990, and photographed Earth from about 6 billion kilometres away as a tiny pale blue dot.
- Carl Sagan designed humanity's first message to the starsGiven just three weeks by NASA, Carl Sagan and Frank Drake designed the Pioneer plaque, a message to any alien finders, now leaving the solar system aboard two spacecraft.
- Carl Sagan made the search for alien life respectableIn 1982 Carl Sagan published a petition in the journal Science supporting the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, signed by 70 scientists including seven Nobel laureates.
- Carl Sagan foresaw ocean worlds on Titan and EuropaCarl Sagan was among the first to suggest that Saturn's moon Titan might have surface liquids and that Jupiter's moon Europa might hide an ocean of water beneath its ice.
- Carl Sagan chaired the Voyager Golden Record committeeFor the Voyager probes launched in 1977, Carl Sagan chaired the committee that chose the Golden Record's contents, including greetings in 55 languages and 116 images of Earth.
- Carl Sagan warned Congress about climate change in 1985Drawing on his study of Venus, Carl Sagan testified to the US Congress in 1985 that the greenhouse effect would change Earth's climate.
- Kip Thorne helped Carl Sagan imagine Contact's wormholesFor his 1985 novel Contact, Carl Sagan asked his friend Kip Thorne how a wormhole might work. The book sold 1.7 million copies in two years and became a 1997 film.
- Carl Sagan won a Pulitzer Prize for The Dragons of EdenCarl Sagan's 1977 book The Dragons of Eden, on the evolution of human intelligence, won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and introduced his Cosmic Calendar.
- Carl Sagan gave the public a baloney detection kitIn The Demon-Haunted World (1995), Carl Sagan offered readers a toolkit for critical thinking and popularised the rule that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
- Carl Sagan warned the world about nuclear winterIn 1983 Carl Sagan co-authored the TTAPS study warning that a nuclear war could cool the planet, work honoured in 2022 with the Future of Life Award.
Sources
- Carl Sagan The Planetary Society
- Carl Sagan Wikipedia
- Cosmos: A Personal Voyage Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.