Carl Sagan Facts
Carl Sagan Facts
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| Interesting Carl Sagan Facts: |
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| Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Rahway High School in New Jersey. |
| He was always an inquisitive child, and spent much of his time in the local public library or visiting the Museum of Natural History in New York. |
| He attended the University of Chicago and had earned two bachelor's degrees and a Master's degree by the time he was twenty-two; he went on to earn two doctorate degrees in astronomy and astrophysics by the time he was twenty-six. |
| He worked in HJ Muller's lab while working on his undergraduate degrees, and wrote an important work on the origin of life. |
| His graduate research work included studies in planetary science, physics, and chemistry. |
| He became a Miller Fellow in 1960 at UC - Berkley before taking a position at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. |
| Sagan's early work was with the US space program, beginning in the early days of the program. He began working as an advisor as early as the 1950s, and actually briefed the Apollo astronauts on what they would experience on the moon. |
| Sagan also made great contributions to the use of robotics within the US space program, specifically the unmanned missions that explored our solar system. |
| Sagan came up with the idea of creating a message for extraterrestrial beings, a message that would be included on all space probes whose mission involved leaving the solar system. |
| He was responsible for the gold disc that was attached to the Pioneer 10 space probe, a message sent out in the hope of communicating more about Earth with any intelligent life that may come across Pioneer. |
| Sagan also hypothesized key observations that further NASA missions proved true, such as the surface temperature of Venus and the existing of water on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. |
| One of his major focuses was on the existence of extraterrestrial life, and his acclaim coupled with his qualifications provided some measure of acceptance to the notion, at least in terms of keeping the scientific community's mind open to the possibility. |
| His thirteen-part series, Cosmos , co-written with Ann Druyan, has been broadcast in over sixty countries and be seen by more than half a billion people. |
| This makes his show the most widely viewed PBS program in history. |
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