Legacy
" Put away your money Dr.Sagan. You gave me the Universe. Now let me do something for you."
- Anonymous
Carl Sagan was a key figure in the golden age of solar system exploration. He loved the subject he taught and he even defined two new types of science: planetary science and exobiology. He had a mission to teach and explain the cosmos to the common man, and he did. These things and more are why many say he was the greatest scientist of his time.
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Most of all I think Carl is truly a figure of democracy: he was the child of working class parents, and this led him to believe that science should belong to everyone. Science is not just a collection of interesting facts, but a way of looking at everything. I think Carl’s greatest legacy is the fact that he was able to communicate a way of looking at the world that was equal parts of skepticism and wonder. Carl delineated how these two ultra-potent human capabilities work: the ability to be skeptical and at the same time to have a soaring sense of wonder about the universe. This is Carl’s ultimate legacy: a way of speaking clearly, without jargon and without mystification, about the wonder of life in the cosmos.
- Ann Druyan
Carl was a teacher at Cornell University. He won the Oersted Medal, and taught many famous scientists such as Bill Nye. This also helped him later when he began work on 'Cosmos': A Personal Voyage.
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"Carl was the Best teacher of science in the world."
-Yervant Terzian,
Carl Sagan lives on through the continuation of 'Cosmos' in 'Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey', as well as the people who he taught or continued his work. He enlarged his legacy when he founded SETI and Planetary Society. He was also the inspiration for the Carl Sagan Award.
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" Watching the original 'Cosmos' was really what inspired me to go into teaching. The way Sagan presented complicated ideas in an eloquent, easy to digest fashion made me want to teach others to further spread knowledge and understanding to others."
- Dylan Olson
Still today Carl is being remembered and memorialized through new facilities dedicated to exploring new forms of life. Just this year, Cornell has dedicated a new program that brings a range of scientists from geologists to bio-chemists to work on finding new forms of life on other planets. This was one of Carl's many dreams, that all scientist would come together to help explore the stars.
"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."
- Carl Sagan
Today Dr. David Morrison, a close friend of Carl's, is head of the Carl Sagan Center; Bill Nye "the science guy" is head of the Planetary Society, and has created a television show for children's education; Neil deGrasse Tyson, whom Carl inspired, has continued his show. Carl has left a major legacy, to whom almost none can compare.
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" Cosmos gave Sagan the muscle to do bold new things: to sell a multimillion-dollar novel to Hollywood, to single-handedly save NASA's SETI project from congressional budget-cutters, to launch a privately funded SETI program--- and to try to save the world from nuclear war. The early-to-mid-1980s marked the peak of his fame. He was now a TV star and a target of considerable praise, gossip, criticism, and parody. He was no longer simply a well-known and controversial scientist; rather, he was known to hundreds of millions of people who normally couldn't care less about science."
- Excerpt from "Carl Sagan A Life"