Carl Edward Sagan (New York, November 9, 1934-Seattle, December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, writer, and science communicator. Initially, he was an associate professor at Harvard University and later became the principal professor at Cornell University. At the latter, he was the first scientist to hold the David Duncan Professorship of Astronomy and Space Sciences, established in 1976, and was also the director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies.
He was an advocate for scientific skeptical thinking and the scientific method, a pioneer of exobiology, and a promoter of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence through the SETI project. He encouraged sending messages aboard space probes, intended to inform potential extraterrestrial civilizations about human culture. Through his observations of the atmosphere of Venus, he was among the first scientists to study the greenhouse effect on a planetary scale.
Carl Sagan gained great popularity thanks to the award-winning documentary television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, produced in 1980, of which he was the narrator and co-author. It was the most-watched series in the history of American public television, with an audience of more than 500 million people in about 60 countries. To accompany the series, the book Cosmos was published. He also wrote the 1985 science fiction novel Contact, which was the basis for the eponymous 1997 film. His publications, which contain 595,000 articles, are archived in the Library of Congress.
He also published numerous scientific articles, and was the author, co-author, or editor of more than twenty popular science books. In 1978, he won the Pulitzer Prize for "General Non-Fiction Literature" for his book The Dragons of Eden.
Throughout his life, Sagan received numerous awards and honors for his work as a communicator of science and culture. Today, he is considered one of the most charismatic and influential science communicators, thanks to his ability to convey scientific ideas and cultural aspects to the general public with simplicity yet rigor.
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