Credit: Carl Sagan ©1994 by Michael Okoniewsk
The astronomer, science communicator, thinker, writer, and teacher Carl Sagan (1934–1996) had an influence as a scientist that is almost unimaginable today. Together with his many scientif ic contributions (including his analyses of the origins of life, his discovery of the temperature of Venus and its connection to the greenhouse effect, and his work on nuclear winter), Sagan played a leading role in every NASA spacecraft mission of exploration until his death, designed the f irst physical messages sent into space, cowrote with Ann Druyan and starred in Cosmos, a television documentary series watched by half a billion people worldwide, wrote the sci-f i novel Contact, which became a major f ilm, and made frequent appearances on The Tonight Show and in essays for Parade magazine, the weekend supplement to hundreds of American newspapers.