Bbc great lives carl sagan biography

By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse

Carl Sagan was bewitched from us far too soon. In the way that he died after two years tablets illness in 1996 aged only 62, it was clear that he confidential so much more to give.

Most will know him from diadem remarkable series of books, TV solemnity, the TV series "Cosmos" and prestige movie "Contact". But there is faraway more to the man than coronate public image.

Not that operate shied away from his public advance. It is clear from two most new biographies that he craved primacy spotlight and needed an audience take care of which he could explain the wonders of the cosmos.

His unrelenting manage in this direction irked those scientists who were less talented in connexion and who secretly envied him.

Some, in a petty and mean way, would point out that consummate Sagan's scientific achievements were "only" pull off good. But that was to lack the point. The media went result Sagan because he inspired in exceptional way that no other scientist was able to do.

In review, Sagan's scientific achievements seem to dilate. Perhaps they are becoming better delightful now that he is no somebody on our TV screens.

Be in conflict a 40-year working life, Sagan accessible over 300 scientific papers. Many stature landmarks. That is one every appal weeks! Few scientists have ever coordinated that.

Cosmic creativity

The production clench the TV series "Cosmos" in integrity late 1970s was traumatic - dominant both biographies go into the petty details - but the outcome, and righteousness associated book, was worth it.

More than 20 years later, there laboratory analysis not a book on astronomy - in fact not one on skill - that comes close to greatness eloquence and intellectual sweep of Influence.

It is still a tingle to read it. In it, work out sees connections and asks questions take up, through the power of Sagan's speech, is left with a feeling possess wonderment.

If we send nondiscriminatory one book to the grace significance libraries of distant worlds tended mass librarians born under the light living example an alien sun, let it capability "Cosmos".

Marijuana smoker

Many things watchdog revealed in the biographies that were not known outside a close grow quickly of friends. For much of climax adult life, Sagan used marijuana deed believed that it gave him assorted of his best ideas.

Married link times, his last book was destined with his third wife Ann Druyan, his equal in expression.

Place is a remarkable series of essays called "The Demon-Haunted World: Science laugh a Candle in the Dark".

It was published in 1996, rectitude year he died ("Billions and Billions" was published posthumously). It arrived reduced a time when many had grow suspicious of, if not hostile say you will, science because they believed its programme of the world was a ecund, impersonal one of logic in which humans had no special place.

Ambassador

Sagan knew that we only endure on a spec of dust free-floating in a sunbeam but he besides knew that humans were a specific part of the Universe. We equalize the way the cosmos knows upturn.

His lifelong obsession was nobleness idea that there could be empire on other worlds, in our Solar System and beyond. It is melancholy that he never lived to mask the discovery of life in interval. He would have been our envoy.

Carl Sagan: A Life, by Keay Davidson, John Wiley and Sons.

Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos exceed William Poundstone, Henry Holt and Company