Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn on Nov. 9, 1934, the son of a Ukrainian immigrant garment worker and Austro-Hungarian mother. He discovered astronomy early in life through visits to the library. By the age of 26, he had a doctor of philosophy degree in astrophysics from the University of Chicago.

He made his mark early with research into the atmospheres of Venus and Mars and began a long association with NASA that included a leading role in the Mariner, Viking, Voyager and Galileo expeditions. Early in his career he was so convinced of the possibility of life on other planets that he argued the Viking Mars space probe should have edible paint and a flashlight to attract Martians.

Sagan and a Cornell colleague were responsible for the famous plaques installed on the Explorer ships Pioneer 10 and 11 as calling cards to other civilizations that included a depiction of Earth’s location in the Milky Way galaxy and illustrations of a nude man and woman.

In the early ’70s, he made the first of his many appearances on “The Tonight Show� with Johnny Carson that introduced millions to the wonders of astronomy and theories about the origin of life.

Sagan was called “an intellectual gadfly� and was sometimes belittled by fellow scientists who said his work was too much style and not enough substance. But Sagan never apologized for his popular work.

“Here’s science dependent as never before on public funds, and so continuing science depends on public support,� he once said. “And how’s the public going to support it if they don’t understand it?�

Sagan was the author of 20 books including Dragons of Eden, an exploration of human intelligence that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978, and Cosmos, a companion to the TV series that is the most widely-read science book in the English language, and Broca’s Brain.

Even while ill, he continued teaching and working productively and shortly before his death, completed The Demon-Haunted World (1996) and a polemic against pseudo-science, a book of essays titled Billions and Billions (Sagan’s trademark phrase on the number of stars in the universe). He also wrote a novel, Contact, that was made into a sci-fi movie in 1997 starring Jodie Foster.

Sagan went to Seattle in 1995 for a bone marrow transplant to combat myelodysplasia, a rare blood disorder that leads to leukemia. He returned to Seattle for chemotherapy in 1996 and thought he had conquered the disease, but his condition deteriorated and he died from pneumonia on Dec. 20, 1996.

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