origin
Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on November 9, 1934. His father was a simple worker from Ukraine and his mother was a housewife. He had one sister, Carol. His family was Reform Jews and lived in a modest home. His father was not religious, unlike his mother, who visited the temple constantly. He was very fond of her, and his mother saw him as the dream that she had not achieved when she was young, and so she loved him madly.
Carl learned two patterns of thinking from his parents, to whom he was very attached despite their differences. The important turning point in his life and development was when his parents visited the New York World's Fair, which made him fascinated by some of the exhibits there. Carl wrote a book called Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, in which the influence of his childhood memories was clearly evident. Sagan witnessed one of the most important events of this famous fair, which was the burial of a time capsule in Flushing Meadows, and this was one of the reasons that excited him when he grew up. He also wrote a book called The Demon-Haunted World, which included some of his memories of the period of World War II, although his mother was trying to keep him away from its events.
Carl took his first solo trip when he was five years old, to the public library, where he was obsessed with knowledge base. When he was seven years old, he also took a trip with his friend to the American Museum of Natural History, and the three-dimensional images there amazed him. His parents encouraged him to be more interested in science, and through what Carl read, he derived his passion for other planets, and he began to focus his efforts on the secrets of the planets in his early years.
Carl attended middle school, and when he was fourteen years old, he and his family moved to New Jersey, where his father's new job was. He attended a high school there, became president of the chemistry club, and set up his own laboratory inside his home. He was more interested in astronomy, which made him think about taking it as a permanent job in his life.
education
Before graduating from high school, he wrote an essay in a competition, in which he talked about the extent to which the Earth's contact with other planets could affect humans, and that this could be harmful or disastrous. His essay won first prize in this competition, and he was nicknamed "the outstanding" among his classmates. Carl graduated to attend the University of Chicago early at the age of sixteen.
During his undergraduate studies, Carl worked in the laboratory of geneticist H. J. Muller, and also contributed to writing a thesis on the origins of life with physical chemist Harold Urey, and he joined an astronomical society called Ryerson.
Carl received a Bachelor of Arts degree with special and general honors, and a Bachelor of Science degree in physics, and continued his graduate studies at the university, to obtain a Master of Science degree in physics, and a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics, through his thesis that he presented entitled Physical Studies of the Planets.
Carl worked with astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who was the chairman of the International Astronomical Union, and they had almost the same interests. He also worked on some secret projects for the US Air Force, and also secret projects for NASA. He also tried to get a scholarship at the University of California, Berkeley, and succeeded in doing so.
Career, research and scientific achievements
Early in his university years, an article by Carl was published called The Atmosphere of Venus. This article caused astronomers at Harvard University to offer Carl a seminar at Harvard. They then offered him a position as a lecturer, but he asked to be an assistant professor. This is what happened, and he had a beneficial effect on many people through his lectures and research there.
At that time, Carl was a planetary science consultant for the Rand Corporation and also worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
Carl was denied a permanent academic position at Harvard, on the grounds that he was a polymath and not a well-known expert in a specific, narrow field. So when he was contacted by a new scientist at Cornell University in New York, he immediately agreed to move there and become a member of the faculty there, and he continued his work there for about thirty years until his death.
Carl became a full professor at Cornell, and was director of its Planetary Studies Laboratory.
The American space program of NASA included Carl, where he worked as a consultant and had tasks in it, as he arranged the scientific experiments that would be conducted above, and sent with the missions physical messages that other civilizations could reach to learn about our civilization, such as the Voyager Golden Record, for example.
Carl did not specialize in a specific field or study, but excelled in communication between sciences. Among his scientific achievements was the discovery of high temperatures on the surface of Venus, which was later proven through trips that reached there. He also guessed that Saturn's moon Titan had liquids on its surface, and that Jupiter's moon Europa had liquids under its surface, which was also proven.
He made many assumptions about Mars, Jupiter, and Venus, and spoke about global warming and its effects on Earth in the future, and his prediction of the existence of life on some planets whose climate predicted the possibility of that. He also won the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.
Carl co-wrote the Cosmos series, one of the most watched series in history, which was turned into a book of the same name. He also wrote the best-selling book, The Dragons of Eden, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, and many other works he presented, such as the famous film Contact, which gained him a great status among people, and became a scientific and cultural icon that will not be repeated.
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