| 出生地： | 纽约州纽约市 |
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阅读卡尔·萨根 Carl Sagan在百家争鸣的作品!!! | |
卡尔·萨根国家或者地区：美国
学科：天文学家
发明创造：研究地外生命的权威学者
简历
萨根（carl sagan）美国天文学家。1934年11月9日生于纽约州纽约市。萨根1960年获芝加哥大学哲学博士学位。他主要的兴趣是行星的格面和大气，这个领域随着柯伊伯的研究和火箭技术的出现而重新获得了生气。例如，他创立了金星大气的温室模型，解释这颗行星令人费解的高温。他也为火星格面的高度差和木星大气中的有机分子找到了证据。此外，在他的兴趣的外围但使魅力增色的是其它行星上存在生命的可能性以及我们这个行星上生命起源的问题。（毫不奇怪，他 是那些好读科学幻想小说的科学家中间的双一个人和掏。）他一直是一个小组的成员，他们试图从模拟原始地球条件的物质体系制造出化合物，经过氨基酸再到核酸的基本构件。1963年他成功地探测到三磷酸腺苷（atp）的形成，那是生命组织的主要能库。因此，看来完全有理由设想在海洋中形成了化学能库。因此，看来完全有理由设想在海洋中成了化学能库，靠太阳能逐步建立起来，并为复杂核酸和蛋白质的产生(总之，为生命的产生)提供了现成的能源。 1968年他调到康奈大学，任天文学副教授兼行星研究实验室主任。1969年他担任天文学杂志（伊卡鲁斯）编辑的职务。
康德说过，读卢梭的书他得读好几遍，因为在初读时文笔的优美妨害了他去注意内容。今天，我们读卡尔·萨根的书，也会出现类似的情况。萨根作为世界一流的天文学家和科学活动家，其科普作品的“含金量”自不待言；而其作品所体现的透彻的哲理性、厚重的历史感和异乎寻常的洞察力，更是科学文化史上的奇迹。享誉世界的科普大师阿西莫夫之所以推崇萨根为“历史上最成功的科学普及家”，其原因亦盖出于此。
萨根1934年11月9日生于纽约，长期任康内尔大学天文学与空间科学教授和行星研究室主任。他深深介入美国的太空探测计划，并在行星物理学领域取得许多重要成果。第2709号小行星以其姓氏被命名为“萨根”。他在科普方面的成就更为引人注目：20世纪80年代他主持拍摄的13集电视片《宇宙》，被译成10多种语言在60多个国家上映；此外他还写了数十部科普读物。1994年，他被授予第一届阿西莫夫科普奖。
今年12月20日是卡尔·萨根的4周年忌辰。此前此后，两部与萨根密切相关的新书《暗淡蓝点》和《卡尔·萨根的宇宙》相继出版，这真是对他的极好纪念。此外，不久前崔永元在《实话实说》节目中邀请美国科学家、反伪科学斗士詹姆斯·兰迪做了一期专题节目，结尾送他一本书，就是兰迪的好友卡尔·萨根的反伪科学的名著《魔鬼出没的世界》的中译本，前两年由吉林人民出版社出版，这也引起大家对他的兴趣。再加上吉林人民社出的《宇宙》，据我所知，这就是目前国内关于卡尔·萨根的四部主要著作。
萨根首创的名词———“暗淡蓝点”，指的是从太空中遥望的地球。书是萨根60岁那年出版的，其主题关系到人类生存与文明进步的长远前景。该书布局大气磅礴，章法井然有序。开卷就是对人类惯于漂泊的历史回眸，继而便淋漓酣畅、丝丝入扣地阐明了当今的科学技术正在为人类移居太空创造最基本的条件。从年轻时代起，萨根便对此种前景持积极乐观的态度，《暗淡蓝点》则用诗一般的语言道出了此种心境：如“我们是在宁静的海洋上航行的水手，我们感受到了微风的吹拂。”
《暗淡蓝点》全书22章，其最后两段意境尤为迷人：
“在过了一段短暂的定居生活后，我们又在恢复古代的游牧生活方式。我们遥远的后代们，安全地布列在太阳系或更远的许多世界上……”
“他们将抬头凝视，在他们的天空中竭力寻找那个蓝色的光点。”“他们会感到惊奇，这个贮藏我们全部潜力的地方曾经是何等容易受伤害，我们的婴儿时代是多么危险，……我们要跨越多少条河流，才能找到我们要走的道路。”
萨根———以及智慧、悟性及志向与之相匹的科学家们，似乎已经找到了这样一条漫漫而修远的通天之途，一条人类文明的未来之路。这不由得令人联想起斯蒂芬·茨威格对罗曼·罗兰的评论：“他的目光总是注视着远方，盯着无形的未来。”卡尔·萨根正是这样的人，因此，人们自然而然地对他充满着崇敬之情。1994年10月，为了庆祝他的60岁生日，康内尔大学专门组织了一个与其工作相关的讨论会，会议就在校园内举行，世界上300位科学家、教育家以及萨根的朋友和家属应邀参加。《卡尔·萨根的宇宙》收录的文章，即来自此次荣誉讨论会。会上的四大论题是：行星探索、宇宙中的生命、科学教育、科学、环境和公共政策。这些话题通过那些卓越的发言者的论述，充分显示了萨根数十年间的兴趣、工作内容和成就之所在。
在这次会议的开始，是华盛顿卡内基研究所的高级研究员弗兰克·普雷斯的“向萨根致敬的演讲”，可谓妙语连珠，他的首句便是：“赫胥黎曾经说过：‘过了60岁还从事科学工作的人，他的作用会是弊大于利。’这对我们一些人是适用的，但卡尔却是少数的例外！”在致敬词的结尾则引证了当年年初萨根的一段名言：（科学）使得国家的经济和世界的文化向前运行。其他国家都很懂得这个道理。这就是为什么美国大学里有这么多来自其他国家的科学和工程学研究生的缘故。科学是发展中国家走出贫困和落后的金光大道。同样的道理，美国如果不能抓住这个要领而放弃科学，那就必然会回到贫困和落后的道路。
4年前的今天———1996年12月23日，卡尔·萨根安葬于康内尔大学的所在地纽约州的伊萨卡。“卡尔讲的题目是宇宙，而他的课堂是世界。”全世界所有受到他的写作、讲课、演说和电视节目感染的人，都将长久地深深地怀念他。
卞毓麟
Sagan became world-famous for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote. A book to accompany the program was also published. Sagan also wrote the novel Contact, the basis for the 1997 film of the same name.
Early life
Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Russian Jewish family. His father, Sam Sagan, was a Russian immigrant garment worker; his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, a housewife. Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagan's words, "the mother she never knew". Sagan graduated from Rahway High School in Rahway, New Jersey, in 1951.
He had one sister, Carol, and the family lived in a modest apartment near the Atlantic Ocean, in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. According to Sagan, they were Reform Jews, the most liberal of the three main Jewish groups. Both Sagan and his sister agree that their father was not especially religious, but that their mother "definitely believed in God, and was active in the temple... and served only Kosher meat.":12 During the height of the Depression, his father had to accept a job as a theatre usher.
According to biographer Keay Davidson, Sagan's "inner war" was a result of his close relations with both his parents, who were in many ways "opposites." Sagan traced his later analytical urges to his mother, a woman who had known "extreme poverty as a child," and had grown up almost homeless in New York City during WWI and the 1920s.:2 She had her own intellectual ambitions as a young woman, but they were blocked by social restrictions, because of her poverty, her being a woman and wife, and her Jewish religion. Davidson notes that she therefore "worshiped her only son, Carl. He would fulfill her unfulfilled dreams.":2
However, his "sense of wonder" came from his father, who was a "quiet and soft-hearted escapee from the czar." In his free time, he gave apples to the poor, or helped soothe labor-management tensions within New York's "tumultuous" garment industry.:2 Although he was "awed" by Carl's "brilliance, his boyish chatter about stars and dinosaurs," he took his son's inquisitiveness in stride, as part of his growing up.:2 In his later years as a writer and scientist, Sagan would often draw on his childhood memories to illustrate scientific points, as he did in his book, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.:9 Sagan describes his parents' influence on his later thinking:
My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.
1939 World's Fair
Sagan recalls that one of his best experiences was when he was four or five years old, his parents took him to the 1939 New York World's Fair. The exhibits became a turning point in his life. He later recalled the moving map of the "America of Tomorrow" exhibit: "It showed beautiful highways and cloverleaves and little General Motors cars all carrying people to skyscrapers, buildings with lovely spires, flying buttresses—and it looked great!":14 At other exhibits, he remembered how a flashlight that shined on a photoelectric cell created a cracking sound, and how the sound from a tuning fork became a wave on an oscilloscope. He also witnessed the future media technology that would replace radio: television. Sagan writes:
Plainly, the world held wonders of a kind I had never guessed. How could a tone become a picture and light become a noise?:14
He also saw one of the Fair's most publicized events, the burial of a time capsule at Flushing Meadows, which contained mementos of the 1930s to be recovered by Earth's descendants in a future millennium. "The time capsule thrilled Carl," writes Davidson. As an adult, Sagan and his colleagues created similar time capsules, but ones that would be sent out into the galaxy. These were the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record records, all of which were spinoffs of Sagan's memories of the World Fair.:15
World War II
During World War II, Sagan's family worried about the fate of their European relatives. He also experienced warfare at the beach near his apartment, where Hitler's "wolf pack" submarines destroyed merchant ships within earshot of his neighborhood. Kids could walk along the beach and find debris, along with body parts, lying in the sand. Sagan, however, was generally unaware of the details of the ongoing war. He writes, "Sure, we had relatives who were caught up in the Holocaust. Hitler was not a popular fellow in our household... But on the other hand, I was fairly insulated from the horrors of the war." His sister, Carol, said that their mother "above all wanted to protect Carl... She had an extraordinarily difficult time dealing with World War II and the Holocaust.":15 Sagan's book, The Demon-Haunted World (1996), included his memories of this conflicted period in his life, where his family dealt with the realities of the war in Europe, but tried to prevent it from undermining his optimistic spirit.
Inquisitiveness about nature
Soon after entering elementary school, he began to express a strong inquisitiveness about nature. Sagan recalled taking his first trips to the public library alone, at the age of five, when his mother got him a library card. He wanted to learn what stars were, since none of his friends or their parents could give him a clear answer:
I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars... And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light... The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.:18
About the time he was six or seven, he and a close friend took trips to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. While there, they went to the Hayden Planetarium and walked around the museum's exhibits of space objects, such as meteorites, and displays of dinosaurs and animals in natural settings. Sagan writes about those visits:
I was transfixed by the dioramas—lifelike representations of animals and their habitats all over the world. Penguins on the dimly lit Antarctic ice;... a family of gorillas, the male beating his chest,... an American grizzly bear standing on his hind legs, ten or twelve feet tall, and staring me right in the eye.:18
His parents helped nurture his growing interest in science by buying him chemistry sets and reading materials. His interest in space, however, was his primary focus, especially after reading science fiction stories by writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, which stirred his imagination about life on other planets, such as Mars. According to biographer Ray Spangenburg, these early years as Sagan tried to understand the mysteries of the planets, became a "driving force in his life, a continual spark to his intellect, and a quest that would never be forgotten."
Education and scientific career
He attended the University of Chicago, where he participated in the Ryerson Astronomical Society, received a bachelor of arts with general and special honors in 1954, a bachelor of science in 1955, and a master of science in physics in 1956 before earning a doctor of philosophy in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960. During his time as an undergraduate, Sagan worked in the laboratory of the geneticist H. J. Muller. From 1960 to 1962 Sagan was a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1962 to 1968, he worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sagan lectured and did research at Harvard University until 1968, when he moved to Cornell University in New York. He became a full Professor at Cornell in 1971, and he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies there. From 1972 to 1981, Sagan was the Associate Director of the Center for Radio Physics and Space Research at Cornell.
Sagan was associated with the American space program from its inception. From the 1950s onward, he worked as an advisor to NASA, where one of his duties included briefing the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon. Sagan contributed to many of the robotic spacecraft missions that explored the solar system, arranging experiments on many of the expeditions. He conceived the idea of adding an unalterable and universal message on spacecraft destined to leave the solar system that could potentially 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 carrying another copy of the plaque, was launched the following year. He continued to refine his designs; the most elaborate message he helped to develop and assemble was the Voyager Golden Record that was sent out with the Voyager space probes in 1977. Sagan often challenged the decisions to fund the Space Shuttle and Space Station at the expense of further robotic missions.
Sagan taught a course on critical thinking at Cornell University until he died in 1996 from pneumonia, a few months after finding that he was in remission of myelodysplastic syndrome.
Scientific achievement
Time cover, Oct. 20, 1980
Sagan's contributions were 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 that planet's surface, and Sagan listed the possibilities in a report later depicted for popularization in a Time-Life book, Planets. His own view was that Venus 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 conclusions on the surface conditions of Venus in 1962.
Sagan was among the first to hypothesize that Saturn's moon Titan might possess oceans of liquid compounds on its surface and that Jupiter's moon Europa might possess subsurface oceans of water. This would make Europa potentially habitable for life. Europa's subsurface ocean of water 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 onto the moon's surface.
He further contributed 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 pressures increasing steadily all the way down to the surface. 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 a kind of runaway greenhouse effect. Sagan and his Cornell colleague Edwin Ernest Salpeter speculated about life in Jupiter's clouds, given the planet's dense atmospheric composition rich in organic molecules. He studied the observed color variations on Mars’ surface and concluded that they were not seasonal or vegetational 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.
He is also the 1994 recipient of the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare."
Scientific advocacy
Planetary Society members at the organization's founding. Carl Sagan is seated on the right.
Sagan's ability to convey his ideas allowed many people to better understand the cosmos —simultaneously emphasizing the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the Earth in comparison to the universe. He delivered the 1977 series of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution in London. 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 was a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life. He urged the scientific community to listen with radio telescopes for signals from intelligent extraterrestrial life-forms. So persuasive was he that by 1982 he was able to get a petition advocating SETI published in the journal Science and signed by 70 scientists including seven Nobel Prize winners. This was a tremendous turnaround in the respectability of this controversial field. Sagan also 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.
Sagan was chief technology officer of the professional planetary research journal Icarus for twelve years. He co-founded the Planetary Society, the largest space-interest group in the world, with over 100,000 members in more than 149 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.
At the height of the Cold War, Sagan became involved in public awareness efforts for the effects of nuclear war when a mathematical climate model suggested that a substantial nuclear exchange could upset the delicate balance of life on Earth. He was one of five authors—the "S" of the "TTAPS" report as the research paper came to be known. He eventually co-authored the scientific paper hypothesizing a global nuclear winter following 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.
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, winning an Emmy and a Peabody Award. It has been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people, making it the most widely watched PBS program in history.
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.
Pale Blue Dot: Earth is a bright pixel when photographed from "Voyager 1" six billion kilometers out (past Pluto). Sagan encouraged NASA to generate this image.
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. He appeared on PBS' Charlie Rose program in January 1995. Sagan also wrote an introduction for the bestselling book by Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time. Sagan was also known for his popularization of science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among the general public, and his positions in favor of scientific skepticism and against pseudoscience, such as his debunking of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction. To mark the tenth anniversary of Sagan's passing, David Morrison, a former student of Sagan, recalled "Sagan's immense contributions to planetary research, the public understanding of science, and the skeptical movement" in Skeptical Inquirer.
Sagan hypothesized in January 1991 that enough smoke from the 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires "might get so high as to disrupt agriculture in much of South Asia…" He later conceded in The Demon-Haunted World that this prediction did not turn out to be correct: "it was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4°–6°C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared." A 2007 study noted that modern computer models have been applied to the Kuwait oil fires, finding that individual smoke plumes are not able to loft smoke into the stratosphere, but that smoke from fires covering a large area, like some forest fires or the burning of cities that would be expected to follow a nuclear strike, would loft significant amounts of smoke into the stratosphere.
In his later years Sagan advocated the creation of an organized search for near Earth objects that might impact the Earth. When others suggested creating large nuclear bombs that could be used to alter the orbit of a NEO that was predicted to hit the Earth, Sagan proposed the Deflection Dilemma: If we create the ability to deflect an asteroid away from the Earth, then we also create the ability to deflect an asteroid towards the Earth—providing an evil power with a true doomsday bomb.
Billions and billion
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.
From Cosmos and his frequent appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Sagan became associated with the catch phrase "billions and billions". Sagan stated that he never actually used the phrase in the Cosmos series. The closest that he ever came was in the book Cosmos, where he talked of "billions upon billions":
A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars—billions upon billions of stars.
—Carl Sagan, Cosmos, chapter 1, page 3
However, his frequent use of the word billions, and distinctive delivery emphasizing the "b" (which he did intentionally, in place of more cumbersome alternatives such as "billions with a 'b'", in order to distinguish the word from "millions" in viewers' minds), made him a favorite target of comic performers including Johnny Carson, Gary Kroeger, Mike Myers, Bronson Pinchot, Penn Jillette, Harry Shearer, and others. Frank Zappa satirized the line in the song "Be In My Video", noting as well "atomic light". Sagan took this all in good humor, and his final book was entitled Billions and Billions which opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catch phrase, observing that Carson himself was an amateur astronomer and that Carson's comic caricature often included real science.
The popular perception of his characterization of large cosmic quantities continued to be a sense of wonderment at the vastness of space and time, as in his phrase "The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth". However, this famous saying was widely misunderstood, as he was in fact referring to the world being at a "critical branch point in history" as in the following quote from Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Episode 8: "Journeys in Space and Time":
"Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history: what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well."
Sagan unit
As a humorous tribute to him, a sagan has been defined as a unit of measurement equal to at least four billion, since the lower bound of a number conforming to the constraint of billions and billions must be two billion plus two billion.
Social concern
Sagan believed that the Drake equation, on substitution of reasonable estimates, suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations highlighted by the Fermi paradox suggests 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 was conveyed in a memorable cinematic sequence in the final episode of Cosmos, called "Who Speaks for Earth?" Sagan had already resigned from the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and voluntarily surrendered his top secret clearance in protest over the Vietnam War. Following his marriage to his third wife (novelist Ann Druyan) in June 1981, Sagan became more politically active—particularly in opposing escalation of the nuclear arms race under President Ronald Reagan.
In March 1983, 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 in 1986 and continuing through 1987. Hundreds of people were arrested, including Sagan, who was arrested on two separate occasions as he climbed over a chain-link fence at the test site.
Personal life and belief
Sagan was married three times: in 1957, to biologist Lynn Margulis, mother of Dorion Sagan and Jeremy Sagan; in 1968, to artist Linda Salzman, mother of Nick Sagan; and in 1981, to author Ann Druyan, mother of Alexandra Rachel (Sasha) Sagan and Samuel Democritus Sagan. His marriage to Druyan continued until his death in 1996.
Isaac Asimov described Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky.
Sagan wrote frequently about religion and the relationship between religion and science, expressing his skepticism about the conventional conceptualization of God as a sapient being. For example:
Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others—for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein—considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws.
In another description of his view of God, Sagan emphatically writes:
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, however, denied that he was an atheist: "An atheist has to know a lot more than I know." In reply to a question in 1996 about his religious beliefs, Sagan answered, "I'm agnostic." Sagan maintained that the idea of a creator of the universe was difficult to prove or disprove and that the only conceivable scientific discovery that could challenge it would be an infinitely old universe. According to his last wife, Ann Druyan, he was not a believer:
When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me—it still sometimes happens—and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl.
In 2006, Ann Druyan edited Sagan's 1985 Glasgow Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology into a 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.
Carl Sagan (center) speaks with CDC employees in 1988.
Sagan is also widely regarded as a freethinker or skeptic; one of his most famous quotations, in Cosmos, was, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This was based on a nearly identical statement by fellow founder of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, Marcello Truzzi, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." This idea originated with Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), a French mathematician and astronomer who said, "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness."
Late in his life, Sagan's books elaborated on 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.
Sagan warned against humans' tendency towards anthropocentrism. He was the faculty adviser for the Cornell Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In the Cosmos chapter "Blues For a Red Planet", Sagan wrote, "If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes."
Sagan was a user and advocate of marijuana. Under the pseudonym "Mr. X", he contributed an essay about smoking cannabis to the 1971 book Marihuana Reconsidered. The essay explained that marijuana use had helped to inspire some of Sagan's works and enhance sensual and intellectual experiences. After Sagan's death, his friend Lester Grinspoon disclosed this information to Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson. The publishing of the biography, Carl Sagan: A Life, in 1999 brought media attention to this aspect of Sagan's life.
In 1994, engineers at Apple Computer code-named the Power Macintosh 7100 "Carl Sagan" in the hope that Apple would make "billions and billions" with the sale of the PowerMac 7100. The name was only used internally, but Sagan was concerned that it would become a product endorsement and sent Apple a cease and desist letter. Apple complied, but engineers retaliated by changing the internal codename to "BHA" for "Butt-Head Astronomer". Sagan then sued Apple for libel, a form of defamation, in federal court. The court granted Apple's motion to dismiss Sagan's claims and opined in dicta that a reader aware of the context would understand Apple was "clearly attempting to retaliate in a humorous and satirical way", and that "It strains reason to conclude that Defendant was attempting to criticize Plaintiff's reputation or competency as an astronomer. One does not seriously attack the expertise of a scientist using the undefined phrase 'butt-head'." Sagan then sued for Apple's original use of his name and likeness, but again lost. Sagan appealed the ruling. In November 1995, an out of court settlement was reached and Apple's office of trademarks and patents released a conciliatory statement that "Apple has always had great respect for Dr. Sagan. It was never Apple's intention to cause Dr. Sagan or his family any embarrassment or concern."
Sagan briefly served as an adviser on Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sagan proposed that the film would suggest, rather than depict, extraterrestrial superintelligence.
Sagan and UFO
Sagan had some interest in UFO reports from at least 1964 when he had several conversations on the subject with Jacques Vallee. Though quite skeptical of any extraordinary answer to the UFO question, Sagan thought scientists 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."
In 1966, Sagan was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force's UFO investigation project. The committee concluded Blue Book had been lacking as a scientific study, and recommended a university-based project to give the UFO phenomenon closer scientific scrutiny. The result was the Condon Committee (1966–1968), led by physicist Edward Condon, and in their final report they formally concluded that UFOs, regardless of what any of them actually were, did not behave in a manner consistent with a threat to national security.
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 such 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". With physicist Thornton Page, Sagan edited the lectures and discussions given at the symposium; these were published in 1972 as UFOs: A Scientific Debate. Some of Sagan's many books examine UFOs (as did one episode of Cosmos) and he claimed a religious undercurrent to the phenomenon.
Sagan again revealed his views on interstellar travel in his 1980 Cosmos series. In one of his last written works, Sagan argued that the chances of extraterrestrial spacecraft visiting Earth are vanishingly small. However, Sagan did think it plausible that Cold War concerns contributed to governments misleading their citizens about UFOs, and that "some UFO reports and analyses, and perhaps voluminous files, have been made inaccessible to the public which pays the bills... It's time for the files to be declassified and made generally available." He cautioned against jumping to conclusions about suppressed UFO data and stressed that there was no strong evidence that aliens were visiting the Earth either in the past or present.
Death
Stone dedicated to Carl Sagan in the Celebrity Path of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
After a long and difficult fight with myelodysplasia, which included three bone marrow transplants, Sagan died of pneumonia at the age of 62 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, on December 20, 1996. He was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Ithaca, New York.
Posthumous recognition
The 1997 movie Contact, based on Sagan's novel of the same name and finished after his death, ends with the dedication "For Carl".
In 1997, the Sagan Planet Walk was opened in Ithaca New York. It is a walking scale model of the solar system, extending 1.2 km from the center of The Commons in downtown Ithaca, NY, to the Sciencenter, a hands-on museum. The exhibition was created in memory of Carl Sagan, who was an Ithaca resident and Cornell Professor. Professor Sagan had been a founding member of the museum's advisory board.
The landing site of the unmanned Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station on July 5, 1997.
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 led the team that landed the Spirit Rover and Opportunity Rover successfully on Mars in 2004.
Asteroid 2709 Sagan is also named in his honor.
Skeptic magazine, Dec. 2006
On November 9, 2001, on what would have been Sagan's 67th birthday, the NASA Ames Research Center dedicated the site for the Carl Sagan Center 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 Center as it opened its doors on October 22, 2006.
Sagan has at least three awards named in his honor:
The Carl Sagan Memorial Award presented jointly since 1997 by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and the Planetary Society,
The Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Public Communication in Planetary Science presented since 1998 by the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences (AAS/DPS) for outstanding communication by an active planetary scientist to the general public — Carl Sagan was one of the original organizing committee members of the DPS, and
The Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science presented by the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) — Sagan himself was the first recipient of the CSSP award in 1993.
In 2006, the Carl Sagan Medal was awarded to astrobiologist and author David Grinspoon, the son of Sagan's friend Lester Grinspoon.
On December 20, 2006, the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, a blogger, Joel Schlosberg, organized a Carl Sagan "blog-a-thon" to commemorate Sagan's death, and the idea was supported by Nick Sagan. Many members of the blogging community participated.
In 2008, Benn Jordan, also known as "The Flashbulb", released the album Pale Blue Dot: A Tribute to Carl Sagan.
In 2009, clips from Carl Sagan's Cosmos were used as the basis for A Glorious Dawn, the first video produced for the Symphony of Science, an educational music video production by composer John Boswell. Musician Jack White later released this song as a vinyl single under his record label Third Man Records. Additional clips were used in several followup videos which featured Sagan alongside other noted scientists and proponents of rational thinking, such as Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Brian Greene, Lawrence M. Krauss, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Sagan is the only scientist featured in every Symphony of Science video.
In 2010, the 76th anniversary of Carl Sagan's birth, the second "Carl Sagan Day" was celebrated on November 6.
Awards and honor
NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal
Annual Award for Television Excellence – 1981 – The Ohio State University – PBS series Cosmo
Apollo Achievement Award – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal – National Aeronautics and Space Administration (twice)
Emmy – Outstanding Individual Achievement – 1981 – PBS series Cosmo
Emmy – Outstanding Informational Series – 1981 – PBS series Cosmo
Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Helen Caldicott Leadership Award – Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament
Hugo Award – 1981 – Cosmo
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
Miller Research Fellowship – Miller Institute (1960–1962)
Oersted Medal – 1990 – American Association of Physics Teacher
Peabody Award – 1980 – PBS series Cosmo
Prix Galbert – The international prize of Astronautic
Public Welfare Medal – 1994 – National Academy of Science
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction – 1978 – The Dragons of Eden
SF Chronicle Award – 1998 – Contact
Named the "99th Greatest American" on the June 5, 2005, Greatest American show on the Discovery Channel
Publication
Planets (LIFE Science Library), Sagan, Carl, Jonathan Norton Leonard and editors of Life, Time, Inc., 1966
Intelligent Life in the Universe, I.S. Shklovskii coauthor, Random House, 1966, 509 pg
UFOs: A Scientific Debate, Thornton Page coauthor, Cornell University Press, 1972, 310 pg
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. MIT Press, 1973, 428 pg
Mars and the Mind of Man, Sagan, Carl, et al., Harper & Row, 1973, 143 pg
Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective, Jerome Agel coauthor, Anchor Press, 1973, ISBN 0-521-78303-8, 301 pg
Other Worlds. Bantam Books, 1975
Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Sagan, Carl, et al., Random House, ISBN 0-394-41047-5, 1978
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Ballantine Books, 1978, ISBN 0-345-34629-7, 288 pg
Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Ballantine Books, 1979, ISBN 0-345-33689-5, 416 pg
Cosmos. Random house, 1980. Random House New Edition, May 7, 2002, ISBN 0-375-50832-5, 384 pg
The Cold and the Dark: The World after Nuclear War, Sagan, Carl et al., Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985
Comet, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, 1985, ISBN 0-345-41222-2, 496 pg
Contact. Simon and Schuster, 1985; Reissued August 1997 by Doubleday Books, ISBN 1-56865-424-3, 352 pg
A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, Richard Turco coauthor, Random House, 1990, ISBN 0-394-58307-8, 499 pg
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, October 1993, ISBN 0-345-38472-5, 528 pg
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. Random House, November 1994, ISBN 0-679-43841-6, 429 pg
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Ballantine Books, March 1996, ISBN 0-345-40946-9, 480 pgs (note: the book was first published and copyrighted in 1995 with an errata slip inserted)
Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, June 1997, ISBN 0-345-37918-7, 320 pg
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, Carl Sagan (writer) & Ann Druyan (editor), 1985 Gifford lectures, Penguin Press HC, November 2006, ISBN 1-59420-107-2, 304 pgs