Carl Sagan Biography

Carl Sagan, also regarded as the “astronomer of people”, was a renowned American astronomer, astrophysicist, Planetary scientist, author, astrobiologist, and science communicator.  Carl Edwarg Sagan was also a founding father of modern disciplines of planetary science and exobiology. He was also a brilliant educator who was able to develop public interest in Science. As an idealist and a dedicated protector of rational scientific thinking, he succeeded in transcending the general categories of academia to become one of the renowned scientists. 

Being a counsellor of National Aeronautics and Space Administration, an abbreviation of (NASA) and a representative of the science teams for the Mariner, Voyager, Viking, and Galileo missions, Sagan played a major contribution in the scientific investigation of the solar system. He was also a renowned educator, but his influence of teaching reached far beyond the classroom through his impressive popular writing and his proficiency in the medium of television.

Who is Carl Sagan?

Carl Slagain, the full name Carl Edward Sagan was a leading American astronomer, an explorer in research for extraterrestrial Biology, a spellbinding teacher, and the most effective and public advocate for the value of Science in research. 

An American Astronomer Carl Sagan was born in a working-class family in Brooklyn on November 9, 1934. At the age of seven, he visited the public library to find out about the shining stars. He found that the stars are similar to suns, only too far, and the Sun is also a pretty normal kind of star, but close up — opened boundless perspectives in his young mind. He acknowledged that if those countless shining stars are suns, they might have their planets. The universe could be overflowing with life. The recommendations were appreciable.

Carl  Sagan Birthday

Every year Carl Sagan's birthday is celebrated on November 9, and he would have been 84 years old this year. Sagan was known for his outstanding poetic way of explaining and transferring listeners into the history and complexities of the universe. He explored the riddles of outer space in his landmark PBS program, “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.”

Carl Sagan Early Life

Carl Sagan, born in New York, Brooklyn, grew up with a strong interest in the planets, stars, and science fiction. His father, Samuel Sagan, immigrated to Ukraine and worked as a garment worker. His mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, developed his keen interest in Science. Sagan often proclaimed his parents' domination of his career, saying that his father influenced his imagination and his mother encouraged him to visit the library and to find books about shining stars. 

Carl Sagan Professional Life

In 1951, Carl Sagan joined the University of Chicago to pursue a degree in Physics and also participated in astrophysics and astronomy in 1960. After leaving Illinois, Sagan joined the UC Berkeley, where he strived to establish an instrument for a NASA mission to Mars known as Mariner 2.

In the 1960s, Carl Sagan research was carried out at the Harvard University and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. There, he centralised his research more closely on planetary science, with a great deal of interest in planets like Venus and Jupiter. Sagan later joined Cornell University as a director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. Sagan's work with NASA continued and was appreciable. An American astronomer Carl Sagan was also an advisor for the Viking missions and worked on the Viking landing site selection. 

Carl Sagan Early Work

The popular scientific contribution carried out by Carl Sagan was research on extraterrestrial life. Sagan joined the University of Chicago to pursue his bachelor’s degree in Physics in 1955 and received a master's degree a year later in 1956. In 1960, he earned his PhD in Doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics from the same university. And he worked at the Harvard University and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1962 to 1968.

Carl Sagan's early work was more fascinated by the physical conditions of the planets, specifically the atmosphere of Jupiter and Venus. During that time, he had a keen interest in finding the possibilities of life beyond earth. In his search for extraterrestrial intelligence, a debatable research field, he did much to advance. For example, in Construction on earlier work by American Chemist Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, he exhibited that amino acid and nucleic acid - the building blocks of life - could be obtained by exposing a mixture of simple vehicles to ultraviolet radiations.  Some scientists criticised his work, arguing that it was illogical to use resources for SETI, a speculation project that was assuredly cursed to be a failure.

The research on Climate Change in 1980 was the earliest work conducted by Carl Sagan. One of his research exhibits that the hottest surface of the planet Venus is due to the runaway greenhouse effect. Throughout his career, Sagan carried on with scientific research, eventually publishing more than 600 papers. Throughout his work, he favoured scientific scepticism and healthy analysis, promoting scepticism as a substitute to belief systems of politics and religion. Carl Sagan was also an anti-war activist. He studied the potential effect of nuclear war and advised for nuclear disarmament.

Carl Sagan Origins of Life

Sagan also explored the origins of life on Earth and promoted the study of exobiology (the biology of extraterrestrial life). In the middle of 1950, Harold Urey and Stanley Miller had successfully produced key organic compounds in the laboratory by redesigning the physical and chemical conditions that were most company forum on Earth before the first forms of life appeared. After this research, Sagan with his colleague Miler sparked a mixture of ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, and water to emit radiation. This had the effect of producing complex chemical compounds, namely amino acids and adenosine triphosphate (ATP), that are significant to living cells.

Carl Sagan  Cosmos Quotes

Here are a few Carl Sagan Cosmos Quotes.

• “Learning Science do not merely accord with spirituality, but it is an intense source of spirituality”- 

• “If you are desire to make an apple pie from its scrape, you must first create the universe”- Cosmos.

• “For beautiful souls such as we, the immensity is endurable only through love.”

• “Human’s Imagination often departs to the world that never existed. But we go nowhere without it”- Cosmos.