Carl Sagan

Carl Edward Sagan started as an assistant professor at Harvard before moving to Cornell, where he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies and worked on the Mariner, Viking, and Voyager programs. He published over 600 scientific papers while writing popular science books - The Dragons of Eden won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. In 1980 he co-wrote and narrated Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, a documentary series seen by at least 500 million people in 60 countries that won two Emmys and a Peabody; its companion book became the bestselling science book to date. He developed the Pioneer plaques and Voyager Golden Record as universal messages for any extraterrestrial intelligence, proposed the Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth, and founded the Planetary Society. His penultimate book, The Demon-Haunted World, promoted skepticism and made famous the maxim "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." After developing myelodysplasia, he died of pneumonia at 62 on December 20, 1996.