For his work, Sagan received numerous awards, including the NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and (twice) for Distinguished Public Service, as well as the NASA Apollo Achievement Award and the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences.
He was elected chairman of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, president of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He served as editor-in-chief of Icarus for 12 years. He was a co-founder and president of the Planetary Society and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
A Pulitzer Prize winner, Sagan was the author of many bestsellers, including Cosmos, the top-selling science book ever published in English. The accompanying television series has been seen by 500 million people in 60 countries. He received 22 honorary degrees from American universities. Sagan's last book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, was published by Random House in March 1996. He was co-producer and co-writer of the Warner Brothers movie Contact, based on his novel, scheduled for release in 1997.
The scientific community didn't always embrace Sagan's tireless efforts with science popularization. Yet he accomplished more to interest the public in astronomy and space exploration than anyone else of his time, and for that, all who admire science should be eternally grateful to Sagan.
Sagan came close to death twice after being diagnosed with blood disease in 1994. Bone marrow donated by his sister, along with chemotherapy, put his cancer in remission. Speaking at a conference after that episode, he said, "I'd like to begin with a personal remark.
I've been in Seattle for the past months, fighting a life-threatening illness which it looks as if I've surmounted." Despite his battle with cancer, Sagan continued his dream of going to the stars.
"The job is by no means done," he said. "We will look for the boundary between the solar system
and the interstellar medium and then we'll voyage on forever in the dark between the stars.
Bibliography of Carl Sagan
- Carl Sagan and I.S. Shklovskii Intelligent Life in the Universe.
New York: Random House, 1966.
- Carl Sagan. The Cosmic Connection. An Extraterrestrial Perspective.
New York: Doubleday, 1973.
- Carl Sagan. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution
of Human Intelligence. New York: Random House, 1977.
- Carl Sagan et. al. Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar
Record. New York: Random House, 1977.
- Carl Sagan. Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science.
New York: Random House, 1979.
- Carl Sagan. Cosmos. New York: Random House, 1980.
- Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. Comet. New York: Random House, 1985.
- Carl Sagan. Contact: A Novel. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985.
- Carl Sagan et. al. The Nuclear Winter: The World After Nuclear
War. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985.
- Carl Sagan and Richard Turco. A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear
Winter and the End of the Arms Race. New York: Random House, 1990.
- Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search
for who we are. New York: Random House, 1992.
- Carl Sagan. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.
New York: Random House, 1994.
- Carl Sagan. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Random House, 1996.