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American astronomer and planetary scientist who was
Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and Director of the Laboratory for
Planetary Studies at Cornell
University until the time of his death from a rare bone marrow disease.
Widely known for his popularization of science, in books and on television
(notably his Cosmos series, which first aired on PBS in 1980), he made many
important contributions to planetary exploration, astrobiology, and SETI. He
co-authored with Shklovskii
the influential Intelligent
Life in the Universe (1966), participated in sending the Arecibo
Message, and helped design the Pioneer
plaque and the Voyager
interstellar record. In the field of planetary science, he established the
greenhouse model for the Venusian
atmosphere and helped show that seasonal changes on Mars are due to
windblown dust (see Mars, changes on) and that the orange color of Titan's
atmosphere is caused by organic aerosols. Sagan worked as a consultant and
adviser to NASA for almost four decades, beginning in the 1950s, and played a
prominent role in the Mariner 9, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo
missions to the planets. He was a devotee and an advocate of broad international
cooperation in space exploration and one of the founders (in 1980) and president
(until his death) of the Planetary
Society. He expressed the opinion that carrying life from Earth to other
planets is a duty of mankind, and that the conquest and colonization by mankind
of other planets and extraterrestrial space are essential to our survival. "All
civilizations," he wrote, "become either spacefaring or extinct." His novel Contact
(1985) was made into a successful film.
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