Dr. Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was a man who made science interesting, understandable and exciting to millions of people around the world. Science educated or not, people watched his 1970s television show "Cosmos" with wonder and a new sense of excitement about space and our connection to it. An astronomer and professor at Cornell University, he published 600 scientific papers, worked on 20 books, and in 1978, won a Pulitzer Prize. He worked with NASA on the space shuttle missions, did research on Venus, Mars, Titan, the origins of life on earth, and nuclear war. He received 22 honorary degrees from colleges and universities all over America. He co-founded The Planetary Society, a huge organization with members from all over the world interested in space, the search for extraterrestrial life, the detection of near-earth asteroids and robotics exploration on Mars. He died in 1996 at the age of 62 after battling cancer for two years. This was terrible loss to the science community and the world, because though Carl Sagan won countless awards and medals in his lifetime, his greatest work was making science accessible to everyone.