Remembering Carl Sagan

In every generation, a few great minds emerge to take their places in the annals of history. The same can be said for great communicators. But a person who is both a great thinker and a great communicator is rare. So we are indeed fortunate to have been contemporary with one such individual, a man so captivating that he was able to turn millions of people head over heals for a subject generally thought to be too difficult to bother with. That subject is science; the man Carl Sagan.

With a genuine sense of wonder that radiated from within, Dr. Carl Sagan became the inspiration for a whole generation of children who would grow up to become scientists. He captured the imaginations of millions who would otherwise have never given space a second thought. Sadly, five years ago today, on December 20, 1996, this brilliant man was taken from us at the young age of 62, the victim of a bone marrow disease and pneumonia. The scientific world was robbed of one of its greatest assets, and the general public of one of its most enigmatic teachers. His colleague, Yervant Terzian, chairman of the Astronomy department at Cornell, said that Sagan was "quite simply the best science educator in the world this century."¹

His body of work attests to this. The 13-hour Cosmos television series-aired on PBS in 1980-has been called the first television blockbuster. Seen by 500 million people in 60 countries, it became the most watched program in public

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