Carl Sagan

Carl Edward Sagan November 9 1934 December 20 1996 was an American astronomer cosmologist astrophysicist astrobiologist author science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences He is best known for his work as a science popularizer and communicator His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them Sagan argued the now accepted hypothesis that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to and calculated using the greenhouse effect Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author coauthor or editor of more than 20 books He wrote many popular science books such as The Dragons of Eden Brocas Brain and Pale Blue Dot and narrated and cowrote the awardwinning 1980 television series Cosmos A Personal Voyage The most widely watched series in the history of American public television Cosmos has been seen by at least 500 million people across 60 different countries The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series He also wrote the science fiction novel Contact the basis for a 1997 film of the same name Description above from the Wikipedia article Carl Sagan licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia