Carl Sagan – American 20th-century astronomer, astrophysicist, and science populariser, author of Cosmos and Contact, Pulitzer Prize winner. Born in 1934 in New York, he taught at Harvard and Cornell, and helped shape NASA’s Voyager and Mariner missions. Through books and the TV series Cosmos, he brought the wonder of the universe to millions, merging science with poetry.
🚀 Helped design Voyager’s Golden Records – a message to aliens. 📖 Won the Pulitzer Prize for The Dragons of Eden. 🌌 His TV series Cosmos became the most-watched science show of its time. 🛸 Fierce critic of pseudoscience, yet open to the search for extraterrestrial life. 💞 Married to writer Ann Druyan, co-creator of Cosmos. 📚 His novel Contact was adapted into a film starring Jodie Foster. 👨🎓 Famous for making complex science simple and poetic. 😅 Funny note: though he rarely said it, the phrase “billions and billions” became his comic trademark.