Carl Sagan

1934 – 1996

Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, and science communicator whose advocacy for science literacy reached hundreds of millions of viewers through the 1980 PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. He played an active role in NASA's Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo planetary missions, and his 1985 novel Contact was adapted into a major motion picture. A founder of the Planetary Society and a steadfast public skeptic of pseudoscience and nuclear escalation, he received the National Academy of Sciences' Public Welfare Medal in 1994.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM