Transcript: Carl Sagan was the first astronomer to attain widespread acclaim in the era of TV and the popular culture. He spent most of his career at the University of Cornell where he was a respected planetary scientist and editor of the main journal of planetary science, Icarus. He was involved in a number of NASA planetary missions including the Voyager and Pioneer probes. In the 1970s he developed, wrote, and starred in the TV series and associated books, Cosmos. Cosmos was perhaps the most influential TV show on science before or since. After that, he wrote the book Contact and was involved in the making of the movie by the same name which was also influential in bringing ideas about life in the universe to a wider public. In a shameful incident late in his career, Sagan was denied membership of the National Academy of Science, partly because of jealousy of the scientists and the idea that he demeaned himself by popularizing science. In fact, Sagan is a hero to most scientists for bringing the ideas of astronomy to so many millions of people.