Carl Sagan

Yesterday was the birthday of astronomer Carl Sagan, (books by this author) [and the first official "Carl Sagan Day"]. He was born in New York City in 1934His father was a Ukrainian immigrant who worked in a coat factory, and his mother was a housewife. He went on to become a great scientist. He studied and taught at several prestigious universities and helped advance the study of astronomy and the U.S. space program. And he published a number of books that helped regular people understand ideas about the universe, including Dragons of Eden: Speculations of the Evolution of Human Intelligence (1977), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Cosmos (1980),which is considered the best-selling science book ever published in English. He also wrote a science fiction novel, Contact (1985), which was made into a film in 1997.

He said, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Writer's Almanac