Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator who taught at Cornell and played an active role in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager programs. He was best known for the 1980 documentary series Cosmos, which he co-wrote and narrated, and for Contact, a science fiction book later adapted as a film. The Dragons of Eden won him the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and The Demon-Haunted World promoted skepticism and the scientific method. Sagan died in 1996 at the age of 62.