Carl Edward Sagan (/ˈseɪɡən/; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences.
Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York.[1] His father, Samuel Sagan, was an immigrant garment worker from Kamianets-Podilskyi, then Russian Empire,[2] in today's Ukraine. His mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a housewife from New York. Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagan's words, "the mother she never knew." Sagan graduated from Rahway High School in Rahway, New Jersey in 1951.[3]
His contributions were central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of Venus. However, he is best known for his contributions to the scientific research of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages that were sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them.
He attended the University of Chicago, where he participated in the Ryerson Astronomical Society,[11] received a B.A. degree in self-proclaimed "nothing" with general and special honors in 1954, a B.S. degree in physics in 1955, and an M.S. degree in physics in 1956, before earning a Ph.D. degree in 1960 with the dissertation "Physical Studies of Planets" submitted to the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The best book on the subject of Science and God, by far, is The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (public library) — a remarkable posthumous collection of essays by Carl Sagan, based on the prestigious Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology he delivered at the university of Glasgow in 1985.
In that same drawer where the transcript of these lectures (Varieties of Scientific Experience: Carl Sagan on Science and God) was rediscovered, there was a sheaf of notes intended for a book we never had the chance to write. Its working title was Ethos, and it would have been our attempt to synthesize the spiritual perspectives we derived from the revelations of science. We collected filing cabinets’ worth of notes and references on the subject. Among them was a quotation Carl had excerpted from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), the mathematical and philosophical genius, who had invented differential and integral calculus independently of Isaac Newton. Leibniz argued that God should be the wall that stopped all further questioning, as he famously wrote in this passage from Principles of Nature and Grace:
“Why does something exist rather than nothing? For ‘nothing’ is simpler than ‘something.’ Now this sufficient reason for the existence of the universe…which has no need of any other reason…must be a necessary being, else we should not have a sufficient reason with which we could stop.”
And just beneath the typed quote, three small handwritten words in red pen, a message from Carl to Leibniz and to us:
“So don’t stop."
[1] Poundstone 1999, pp. 363–364, 374–375
[2] "Carl Sagan". Internet Accuracy Project. Grandville, MI: Internet Accuracy Project. Retrieved August 22, 2012.
[3] Davidson, Keay (1999). Carl Sagan: A Life. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
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