Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan got married thrice in his life. In 1957, he married biologist Lynn Margulis. She was an evolutionary theorist, science author and educator. The couple had two children, Jeremy and Dorian Sagan.Themarriage ended in divorce in 1965.

He next married artist and writer Linda Salzman on April 6, 1968. She created the artwork for the Pioneer plaque, co-produced the Voyager Golden Record and co-authored ‘Murmurs of the Earth’. The couple had a son named, Nick Sagan. This marriage also ended in a divorce in 1981.

In 1981, he married Ann Druyan, an award winning writer and producer specializing in the communication of science. They had two children, Alexandra and Samuel Sagan. The marriage lasted until his death in 1996.

Carl Edward Sagan was born on November 9, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Samuel Sagan, was an immigrant from Kamianets-Podilskyi (now in Ukraine) and worked in the garment industry. His mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was from New York.

Carl was the eldest of his parents’ two children; he had a sister called Carol. They lived in a modest house in Bensonhurst and had little money. Yet, their parents took care to nurture in them interest in different subjects, especially science.

In 1939, when he was not yet five, he was taken to New York’s World Fair by his parents. Although he was still a small child he was so impressed by different exhibits, especially the ‘Futurama’, that he was able to recall them later in life.

Carl began his education at a local elementary school. He discovered that the sun was a star and got amazed by the fact. Slowly, he began to develop interest in planets and stars.

In time, he enrolled at the David A. Boody Junior High School, where he developed interest in chemistry. However, astronomy remained his favorite hobby. In1948, the family shifted to Rahway, New Jersey and Carl was enrolled at Rahway High School and graduated from there in 1951.

In 1960, Carl Edward Sagan began his career as a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Barkley. There, he helped a team of astrophysicists to develop an infrared radiometer for NASA’s Mariner 2 robotic probe.

In 1962, Sagan joined Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, an affiliated institute of Harvard University, as an assistant professor. Concurrently, he was a visiting scientist to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In the latter capacity, he contributed significantly to the first Mariner missions to Venus, working both on its design and management. Working with Joshua Lederberg, Sagan also helped to expand the role of biology in NASA.

During this period, he mainly worked on the physical conditions of different planets, especially Mars and Venus. He established that the radio emissions from Venus were the result of very hot surface temperature caused by the sun’s heat, trapped between the surface of the planet and its carbon dioxide cloud-cover.

His theory refuted earlier notion that the atmosphere of Venus was more like earth’s atmosphere. Although many scientists were skeptic, it was confirmed first by NASA’s Mariner 2 and later by the Soviet scientists.

Carl Sagan is best remembered for his scientific research on extraterrestrial life. He showed that amino acids and nucleic acids, the two main components of life, could be created by exposing a mixture of certain chemicals to ultraviolet rays and therefore, life can exist outside the earth.

He is also known for assembling the first two physical messages sent into the space by NASA. The first was Pioneer plaques, set up on Pioneer 10 and 11 and the other was Voyager Golden Records, attached to Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.

The Pioneer plaques consisted of images of nude man and woman along with several other symbols co-designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. It had the potential to be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them one day.

Voyager Golden Records is a kind of time capsule, meant for communicating to extraterrestrials the story of the earth and its inhabitants. They comprised of 116 images and a variety of natural sounds as well musical selection from different ages and cultures, messages in Mores Code etc. The contents were selected by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan.