" Carl Sagan went off to the University of Chicago (when he was 16), from which he recieved bachelor's degrees in 1954 and 1955, a master's degree in physics in 1956 and a Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960. He accepted a fellowship at the University of Berkeley, became an assitant professor of astronomy at Harvard University, and then joined Cornell faculty in 1968. He became a full professor in 1971."*
He originally came from Brooklyn, New York and was the son of Samuel Sagan, a jewish immigrant from the Ukraine and Rachel Molly Gruber Sagan. He had interests in science and astronomy and in mythology, rocketry and science fiction all through his childhood. "His family moved to Rahway, New Jersey, in the late 1940's, where he attended Rahway High School...
Astounding Science Fiction introduced him to more scientific speculations...That same year inaugurated the "flying saucer" craze..."*
At The University of Chicago, working with Nobel-Prize winning chemist Professor Harold C. Urey, Stanley Miller, a grad student experiment produced the result of amino acids, the building blocks of living organisms. " Miller's experiment dramatized the possiblity of explaining life and its origins in purly scientific terms without resorting to supernaturalism or mysterious "vital forces." This experiment thrilled Sagan, partly because he was a religious skeptic and partly reinforced his belief in extraterrestrial life....Because hydrogen pervades the cosmos, this implied that alien life might be common. Humans might not live alone in the cosmos."*
Carl Sagan went on to do a paper on "Radiation and the Gene" with H.J. Muller of Indiana University...then went on to work at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin and the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas---more concerned about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. At Wisconsin, Sagan met another future mentor, Joshua Lederberg ( future Nobel Laureate) with mutual interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life ( the science of exobiology ).
Later he co-wrote "Intelligent Life in the Universe (1966)" with Soviet radioastronomer I.S. Shklovskii. His later bestselling book "The Cosmic Connection (1973)" with his "ability in it to explain difficult ideas in entertaining ways won him a semiregular spot on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" on the NBC-TV network...( he was on Johnny Carson's Show over 26 times in his career.)
" The Dragon's of Eden " came out next in 1977. "In that year NASA launched to the outer solar system the Voyager space probes, which carried audio records designed by Sagan and others. The records contained samples of terrestrial music, earthly sounds and voices and accoustically coded pictures...."*(?)
His work at Berkely (came from
)--"The Miller Fellowship would change Sagan's life. His California idyll of the early 60's lasted less than three years, yet from that time on, he was-metaphorically- a permanent Californian. He would repeatly return to the Golden Gate State for the rest of his life, sometimes for years at a time, to work on science or television or movie projects, sporting sunglasses and cruising freeways in his Porsche with the license plate PHOBOS ( after the moon on Mars)."**
" Sagan flew off to places such as Green Bank, West Virginia where he and older, more distinguished scientists discussed ways to contact extraterrestrials."..."The National Radio Astronomy Observatory radiotelescope is in the radio-"quiet valley of Green Bank." "The first SETI "conference" occurred at Green Bank in November 1961." One scientist who was there, John C. Lilly, is one of the strangest characters in modern American science. At the conference, in addition to all the other theories posed about intelligent life and our human origins, Lilly argued that Earth has at least one other intelligent species---dolphins....His off beat career has inspired at least two major films about unorthodox scientists---( The Day of the Dolphin and Altered States). His speech was the hit of the conference.....
Sagan visted Lilly's lab in the early 70's ( in the Cosmic Connection he includes a chapter about his experiences with dolphins)
" Lilly's admirers were less charmed by his subsequent career. He began taking mind-altering drugs and wrote strange, sometimes incomprehensible books about his experiences. His dolphin research fell into disfavor.... Now in the mid-80's and living in Hawaii, Lilly claims he has psychically communicated with extraterrestrials via drugs. The extraterrestrials-"transcendant beyond-humans," he calls them- inhabit "other dimensions."
" Lilly's strange decline epitomized that of a not terribly uncommon personality type of the late 20th century, the once-capable scientist who, tired of the rigors of cold, hard reason, begins to dip into pseudoscience and mysticism...( Lilly, Timothy Leary, Brian O'Leary, James McDonald) Sagan knew the last set of people well. Their disappearance into unchartered waters may have reinforced Sagan's anxiety about the future of science and reason....an anxiety he expressed in one of his last book,
The Demon-Haunted World."**
" Around 1960, almost all scientists regarded flight into the stars ...effectively impossible...The major problem was Einstein's speed limit. No physical object can reach the speed of light, 186,00 miles per second...In a year a beam of light travels one light year---6 trillion miles...the nearest star is four light years away..."**
"Sagan speculated that galactic aliens, however, had visited earth in the distant past..."**
*NYTIMES.COM: "Carl Sagan, an Astronomer Who Excelled at Popularizing Science, Is Dead at 62" William Dicke
**sfgate.com:CALIFORNIA COSMOLOGY Carl Sagan: The Berkeley Years, The San Francisco Examiner, August 22, 1999