Carl Edward Sagan was born on 9 November 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. An astronomer and planetary scientist, he assembled the first physical messages sent into space attached to the Pioneer and Voyager probes. He was Assistant Professor at Harvard and employee at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory until 1986. Appointed Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University in 1968, he became Professor of Astronomy in 1971. Sagan cofounded the Planetary Society in 1980 and cowrote the television series Cosmos with his wife, Ann Druyan.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for The Dragons of Eden, he was also awarded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Distinguished Public Service Medal and the Ørsted Medal. Sagan expressed scepticism about conventional religion, which he wanted to replace with a scientifically based belief system. Important works include Other Worlds (1975), Cosmos (1981), Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1993), Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (1997), Demon-Haunted World (1997), and Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1997).
