The Full Biography
Carl Sagan. Astronomer. Writer. The Brooklyn kid who put the universe on Sunday-night television and asked a species to act as if it knew it was living on a mote of dust.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a turtle-neck, a spacecraft model, and a voice saying “billions” as if the word were a hymn and a warning. The year was 1980. The series was Cosmos. What the still cannot show is Carl Edward Sagan of Bensonhurst, a working-class Jewish house, a Cornell laboratory that took planetary science seriously when it was still a little disreputable, and a second life of nuclear-winter papers, a novel, a lawsuit, and a bone-marrow disease that ended the file in Seattle at sixty-two.
He was born on November 9, 1934, in Brooklyn. His father, Samuel, came from what is now Ukraine and worked in the garment trade. His mother, Rachel, took him to the 1939 World’s Fair and to the library. The library is the origin story he never outgrew. The University of Chicago gave him a path through physics and astronomy when those departments still raised eyebrows at a student who also wanted to write for civilians. He worked on planetary atmospheres, on Venus’s greenhouse, on the possibility that Mars and Titan might have stories worth a spacecraft. NASA was young. He made himself useful to it.
Cornell hired him. The Laboratory for Planetary Studies became a base. He advised Mariner, Viking, Voyager. He helped choose the Golden Record that Voyager carried off the planet — greetings, music, a map of how to find us if anyone is looking. It is an optimistic object built by a man who spent the same years thinking about nuclear winter. Both impulses are him. The Cosmic Connection, The Dragons of Eden (a Pulitzer), then Cosmos on PBS with Ann Druyan and Steven Soter: thirteen hours that made astronomy a popular art without turning it into astrology. “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” The sentence is famous because it is exact.
The University of Chicago trained him: physics, astronomy, a student who also wanted to write for civilians when that still raised eyebrows. He worked on planetary atmospheres, on the greenhouse that makes Venus a warning, on Mars and Titan as places that might have stories worth a spacecraft. Harvard had him for a stretch; tenure did not. Cornell took him in 1968 and let the Laboratory for Planetary Studies become a parish. He was useful to a young NASA: Mariner to Venus and Mars, Viking’s landing on Mars, Voyager’s grand tour. With Linda Salzman he helped design the Pioneer plaque — a nude couple and a map, a greeting bolted to a machine. With Druyan, Frank Drake, and others he built Voyager’s Golden Record: Bach, Chuck Berry, greetings in languages, a note in a bottle aimed at a dark that might never open it. In 1977 both Voyagers left. The record is still outbound.
The Cosmic Connection (1973) taught civilians the solar system as a neighborhood. The Dragons of Eden (1977) won the Pulitzer for a book about the evolution of intelligence. Broca’s Brain followed. Then Cosmos, 1980, thirteen hours on PBS: the Ship of the Imagination, the library of Alexandria, the mote of dust. Ann Druyan and Steven Soter were co-writers. Johnny Carson had already made “billions and billions” a joke; Sagan’s actual habit was precision, not the catchphrase. The series is the reason a generation can still picture the scale of the solar system. He founded The Planetary Society with Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman because he thought exploration needed a constituency, not only a budget cycle. The TTAPS paper of 1983 — Turco, Toon, Ackerman, Pollack, Sagan — put nuclear winter into the language: soot in the stratosphere after fire. Critics said he overreached. He said the downside of underreaching was a species.
He founded The Planetary Society with Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman because he thought exploration needed a constituency, not only a budget cycle. He argued, in public, against nuclear weapons as if the atmosphere were a patient. The TTAPS paper on nuclear winter — Turco, Toon, Ackerman, Pollack, Sagan — put his name on a climate of soot. Critics said he overreached. He said the downside of underreaching was a species. He did not become modest about the stakes.
The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.Carl Sagan, Cosmos
The turn is the 1990s, when the popularizer was told, again, that popularity is not serious. He was denied membership in the National Academy of Sciences, a snub that still reads as a committee protecting a club. He wrote Pale Blue Dot after Voyager 1, at his urging, looked home from beyond Neptune. The photograph is a pixel. The essay is the second masterpiece. The Demon-Haunted World (1995) is a civics book disguised as a science book: how to think so you cannot be sold a lie. He was already ill.
SETI — the search for extraterrestrial intelligence — was a research program he treated as science, not as a punch line. He argued for listening. He argued for sending a greeting. The Pioneer plaque and the Voyager record are the outgoing mail. The Drake equation is the arithmetic of maybe. Viking’s biology experiments on Mars, which he helped frame for civilians, did not find a civilization. They found a planet worth the trip. He taught at Cornell as if the lecture hall were a second Cosmos: large, exact, unwilling to condescend. Students remember the turtleneck and the insistence that wonder is a method, not a mood. Contact (1985) put that method in a novel. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, with Druyan, put it in anthropology. Pale Blue Dot put it in a pixel. The Demon-Haunted World put it in a kit for not being sold a lie. The National Academy’s refusal in 1992 sits beside those books like a committee minutes next to a public square.
He was already ill when the last books came out. Myelodysplasia, transplants at Fred Hutchinson in Seattle, infections, a calendar that shrank from lecture halls to wards. He kept writing. He kept arguing. Druyan was the partner of the Record, the series, the last pages. On December 20, 1996, the pneumonia won. He was sixty-two. Voyager was already past the planets. The Golden Record was already a bottle in a dark that has not opened it. Ithaca kept the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. The Planetary Society kept the constituency. NASA kept the cadence. The parody kept “billions.” The work kept the pixel, the soot paper, the Academy snub, and a child from Bensonhurst who was allowed to stay in a library.
Six things most people never knew
- The World’s Fair and the library are the first lab. Bensonhurst, 1930s. The cosmos started as a child who was allowed to stay and read.
- Venus and greenhouse physics came before the turtleneck. The television famous man was already a planetary scientist.
- The Voyager Golden Record is partly his insistence that a spacecraft should carry a greeting. Music, maps, a note in a bottle.
- Nuclear winter was a research program, not a slogan. The TTAPS paper. He spent political capital on soot in the stratosphere.
- The National Academy did not take him. A professional wound. The public took him instead.
- He died of pneumonia after a bone-marrow disease, waiting for a transplant to hold. Seattle, December 20, 1996. Sixty-two. Ann Druyan was there.
He married three times. Lynn Margulis, the biologist, was the first; their sons include Dorion Sagan. Linda Salzman was the second; Nick Sagan is their son. The third marriage, to Ann Druyan, is the partnership of the last decades: Cosmos, the Record, the books, the illness. Their children are Sasha and Sam. She has kept the work in print and the voice from being turned into a cartoon of wonder. He was, by every colleague’s account, both generous in a lecture hall and exhausting in an argument. Illness did not sand that down.
The later years
Ithaca in those last years was still a lecture when the blood counts allowed and a desk when they did not. He finished Pale Blue Dot and The Demon-Haunted World as a man who knew the marrow was failing and who treated that knowledge as another fact, not as a sermon. Druyan was in the room for the sentences and for the wards. The Planetary Society kept calling. Students kept writing. Voyager kept going. He had asked a species to look at a pixel and behave accordingly. He spent the remainder trying to leave behind a method for not being fooled, and a greeting bolted to a machine that has not come home.
Home, in the last decade, was Ithaca and then the rooms a transplant requires. Cornell remained the parish. Druyan remained the collaborator. He wrote Pale Blue Dot (1994) after Voyager 1, at his urging, turned a camera home from beyond Neptune on Valentine’s Day 1990. The photograph is a pixel in a sunbeam. The essay asks a species to act as if it knew it was living on that pixel. The Demon-Haunted World (1995), with Druyan, is the civics book: a baloney-detection kit, a defense of the method against the sale of a lie. He was already carrying myelodysplasia, a bone-marrow disease that fails the ordinary test of making blood. He kept the lecture calendar as long as the blood counts allowed.
Contact, the 1985 novel, had been the fiction version of the same insistence: a scientist, a signal, a public that wants a miracle and a method that will not fake one. He worked on the film science with Druyan. The picture came out in 1997, after he was gone, with Jodie Foster in the chair. He did not see the release. He spent 1995 and 1996 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle through transplants and infections. He wrote anyway. He argued anyway. A dispute over an Apple advertisement that used his likeness sat in the same years as the hospital — the ordinary friction of a famous scientist who had become a brand. None of that is the monument. The monument is a generation that learned the scale of the solar system from a PBS hour and then, some of them, went to school.
Bensonhurst is still the first lab. The 1939 World’s Fair and the library card are still the first instruments. Cornell is still the parish. Voyager is still outbound. The Golden Record is still a bottle. The TTAPS paper is still soot in the language. The Academy minutes are still a snub. Pale Blue Dot is still a pixel. The Demon-Haunted World is still a kit. Seattle is still the last ward. He did not reach old age. He reached a method, and a greeting, and a warning.
On December 20, 1996, pneumonia won. He was sixty-two. Druyan was there. The pale blue dot did not notice. That was always the point. The National Academy had not taken him. The public had. The Planetary Society kept the constituency. NASA kept talking in his cadence when it needed civilians to care. The Golden Record kept going. It is farther away every day.
Those last Ithaca and Seattle years were not a fade. They were a scientist finishing sentences about skepticism while the marrow failed, a husband writing with the partner of the Record, a father, a man who had been told popularity is not serious and had answered with Pale Blue Dot and a kit for not being fooled. He did not reach old age. He reached a pixel and a warning. The turtleneck is the parody. The hospital, the essay, and the outbound record are the work.
What he did after the first fame of Cosmos was the same job he had taken in Bensonhurst’s library: stay and read, then tell the room what the scale is, then ask the room not to burn itself down. Nuclear winter, the Academy snub, the novel, the last books, the transplants — that is the chapter. He died before old age while asking people to think. Ithaca kept the lab. Seattle kept the last ward. The record kept the greeting.
After he was gone
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos revival is a sequel and a debt. NASA still talks in his cadence when it needs civilians to care. The Golden Record is farther away every day. The Demon-Haunted World is assigned in rooms that have never seen the original Cosmos on a cathode tube. Druyan remains the executor of the voice.
He came out of Brooklyn with a library card, taught a planet its own smallness, sent a record out of the system, warned about winter after fire, and died before old age while asking people to think. If you only remember “billions,” you have the parody. If you remember Bensonhurst, TTAPS, the Academy snub, and the pixel, you have him.
Portrait: NASA/JPL · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons