In 1968, now a well-known quantity in the scientific realm, Sagan briefly served as a consultant on the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, although a clash of personalities ensured the gig was short-lived. He also testified before Congress during this period about UFOs, which had captured the minds of the newspaper-reading populous, and proposed terraforming Venus into a habitable world. While still in his 30s, Sagan began speaking out on a range of fringe issues, issues that would gain him much attention, such as the feasibility of interstellar flight, the idea that aliens visited the Earth thousands of years ago and that creatures resembling “gas bags” live high in Jupiter's atmosphere. Working again with NASA, Sagan helped choose where the Viking probes would touch down on Mars and helped craft the messages from Earth that were sent out with the Pioneer and Voyager probes sent beyond our solar system. In 1968, Sagan became the director of Cornell University’s Laboratory for Planetary Studies, and three years later, he became a full professor. The 1960s found Sagan at Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, where his work centered on the physical conditions of the planets, particularly those of Venus and Jupiter. Further Work With NASA and Fringe Science There, he helped a team develop an infrared radiometer for NASA’s Mariner 2 robotic probe. in astronomy and astrophysics, landing at the University of California, Berkeley, as a fellow in astronomy. Four years later, Sagan moved to California after obtaining a Ph.D.

in physics, and he received his masters a year later. Sagan graduated high school in 1951 at age 16 and headed to the University of Chicago, where experiments he conducted drove his fascination with the possibility of alien life. He also quickly became a fan of the prevalent 1940s science-fiction stories in pulp magazines and was drawn in by reports of flying saucers that suggested extraterrestrial life. Soon after, his parents took him to the New York World’s Fair, where visions of the future piqued his interest further. Sagan’s interest in astronomy began early on, and when he was five, his mother sent him to the library to find books on the stars. Early YearsĬarl Edward Sagan was born on November 9, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York, the first of two children. He wrote one novel, several books and academic papers and the TV series Cosmos, which was reborn on TV in 2014.

An anti-nuclear activist, Sagan introduced the idea of “nuclear winter” in 1983. He was named director of Cornell’s Laboratory for Planetary Studies in 1968 and worked with NASA on several projects.

Astronomer Carl Sagan graduated from the University of Chicago, where he studied planets and explored theories of extraterrestrial intelligence.

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