Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was a planetary scientist who helped explain Venus's extreme greenhouse effect and worked on NASA missions including Viking and Voyager, for which he curated the Golden Record. His 1980 television series Cosmos reached hundreds of millions of viewers, and his 1994 book Pale Blue Dot reflects on a photograph of Earth taken by Voyager 1 at his urging. Some colleagues resented his fame, yet he did serious research throughout.