I must go back nearly 40 years in my mind to the Spring Term at Cornell in 1981. I was at Cornell University between 1980 and 1981 as a Hubert Humphrey fellow having spent the entire Fall semester trying to come to terms with the American university system, grappling with courses in Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, making friends in an alien land and appreciating the natural beauty of the campus – arguably the most beautiful in the US. The Cornell campus was studded with green hillocks, our very own Fall Creek, Cascadilla Gorge, the large Cayuga lake, our very own Beebe lake, Triphammer falls and Ithaca falls.
I did not know that Carl Sagan was a professor of Astronomy at Cornell and had not seen his epic COSMOS – A PERSONAL VOYAGE which had been aired over the span of September to December in 1980. In fact, we did not have a TV. So, I came to hear of his existence at Cornell from our University President Frank H.T. Rhodes, whom I had to petition to change from a non-degree affiliation to a degree status (Master of Professional Studies). We were discussing my academic future over an excellent lunch at Statler Inn when the topic came up. I cannot say who was more surprised – Dr. Rhodes at learning that I did not know about COSMOS, though I had read The Dragons of Eden and Broca’s Brain, or me learning that Sagan was a Cornell faculty. I came to know a bit about his academic background. He had an MS in Physics from the University of Chicago, Ph.D from Berkeley (where my teenage favorite George Gamow was one of his advisors) and served as Assistant Professor at Harvard. But, he was denied tenure at Harvard and subsequently Cornell appointed him. Since 1968, Carl Sagan spent the rest of his life at Cornell.
After this, came a hiatus with the term-end exams, Christmas, and a trip to Mexico as part of a course. I came back to join the Spring term only to find that Cornell spring was mythical, and we remained snow-bound till April. It was only in late April or early May when I heard from some friends on a birding trip that Carl Sagan was back at the campus and it was possible to meet him at the Friday evening astronomy open-house sessions at the Fuertes observatory which overlooked the footbridge at the mouth of Beebe lake. So, I made it a point to go there on a Friday evening to find Carl Sagan himself delivering an impromptu talk to a group of about 40 students and a couple of outsiders. There was no problem in joining them and I found the talk was easy to follow. What really impressed me was his capability to communicate and his bubbling energy. He certainly looked much younger than 46 (I was 32 then) and he was jumping about, bubbling with energy. That is how we met. Unlike what I had expected, this was not a rehash of his COSMOS series, but a sort of sounding board for ideas. Many of the listeners were Astronomy undergraduates and I learnt that he usually took the introductory courses ASTRO 102 and 104 but these students had joined when he was on leave. To their seniors he taught ASTRO 201 and he also started a course on skepticism (ASTRO 490) because he believed that a scientist had to be a skeptic. Carl was then the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences, director of the Laboratory of Planetary Studies at Cornell and co-founder of the Planetary Society.
In that lecture, whilst he was talking about inter-planetary travel, his ideas and personality mesmerized me. Through his work he had explained Venus’s high temperatures with a runaway greenhouse effect, the seasons of Mars, the color of Jupiter’s moon Titan and the possibility of life in Jupiter’s clouds. He also spoke of exoplanets and the possibility of travels beyond the solar system. I found that he was addicted to science fiction. We started talking because, I think, I did not fit in with the rest of the crowd (as well as the only one with a brown skin). While discussing inter-planetary travel, he got quite carried away when he learnt that I had not only read Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, but had also moved through Edgar Rice Burroughs (Mars and Venus series), Patrick Moore, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Fred Hoyle and Robert Heinlein. He told me that in 1973, there was a discussion at Cornell on ‘Science and Science Fiction’ featuring Isaac Asimov, Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold and himself. I have no doubt about who would have been the star of that session. Carl seemed delighted when he learnt that I had a Master’s in Physics, was very fond of literature and was now studying Agricultural Economics. I could only attend another one of his lectures, where he discussed extra-terrestrial intelligence and his experience with the SETI project. Yet, he was a total non-believer in UFOs. I distinctly remember he kept on using the phrase ‘billions and billions’, drawling over the vowels. It is, therefore, appropriate that Sagan is an established term today meaning several billions.
That was the sum of my interactions with the great man. Overall, he can be described as an astronomer, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, environmentalist and/or author, but above all, he stood out as a science communicator and science popularizer. The COSMOS series on PBS attracted the presence of a live audience of 500 million, but in America, he was better known for his appearances in Johnny Carson’s ‘Tonight’ shows. I saw the COSMOS series on Doordarshan only in 1986 but had got hold of the book Cosmos much before that. I eventually found out that he was a co-author of The Cold and the Dark: The World after Nuclear War (1984) which coined the term ‘nuclear winter’, thus showing that he was an anti-nuclear activist. Another term he immortalized was the ‘pale blue dot’ which was a photograph of the earth taken from the Voyager 1 space probe from a distance of 6 billion km at Sagan’s insistence. Sagan later wrote a book of the same name which he intended to be the successor of Cosmos. Incidentally, an interdisciplinary institute was set up at Cornell named ‘Pale Blue Dot Institute’ which has been renamed ‘Carl Sagan Institute’ in 2015. Through this his name still lives on.
I knew little about Sagan’s personal life. I assumed from his conversations that he was an atheist or perhaps a free thinker. I now know that he was born into a Jewish family of Ukrainian descent in Brooklyn. He was married thrice and his marriage to Ann Druyan, his partner and co-author in COSMOS and other ventures, lasted till his death. Incidentally, his first wife Lynn Margulis was a famous evolutionary biologist, who had co-authored with James Lovelock the famous Gaia hypothesis. His second wife Linda Salzman was an artist and author, whom he divorced in 1980 to marry Ann Druyan. Sagan had bought a house at 900, Stewart Avenue which was an Egyptian revival house dating back to 1890 and was comprehensively renovated. I recall this strange looking (haunted?) house on a ledge overlooking the Fall Creek and Ithaca Falls in all its glory. I used to notice this house during my jaunts along Fall Creek drive or Forest Home Drive because it looked so bizarre, not knowing that Sagan was to buy this house in 1981.
This great man died in 1996 from cancer, aged only 62, working frenetically till his last day. He died in Seattle, but was buried at Lake View Cemetery, Ithaca at Cayuga Heights, overlooking the Fall Creek, as if cementing his bond with Cornell even after his death. As an epitaph, I can only paraphrase what the University President Frank Rhodes once told me, “Carl Sagan made no earthshaking great discovery at Cornell, yet he will be remembered more than most of our Nobel Laureates (59 at the latest count) because he was “an extraordinary science communicator.” I have nothing more to add beyond saying that my hope for the third version of COSMOS, that has been aired recently, is to have rekindled interest in and derive inspiration from the life of this great man.
Author: Mr. Prasadranjan Ray earned his BSc Physics Honours from Presidency College, Kolkata in 1968 and MSc in Pure Physics from Calcutta University in 1970. He holds an Associateship Diploma awarded by the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, (1971-72) and Master of Professional Studies in International Agriculture and Rural Development awarded by Cornell University (1980-81). He also has a Certificate of Development in Gender Planning, from the University College of London (1991). Mr. Prasadranjan Ray joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1972. He has held key posts in Education, Rural Development, Land Reforms, Public Health, Industries, Forests, Power, Home and Higher Education departments in West Bengal, retiring as Additional Chief Secretary in 2008. He served as Chairman, West Bengal Electricity Regulatory Commission from 2008 to 2013. He is involved with several NGOs, clubs, and magazines. He has written extensively on Popular Science, Environment and Wildlife, Sports and Literature. He has also contributed (edited and written) towards the publication of over a dozen books.
Editors: Shubhobroto Ghosh is a former journalist with the Telegraph newspaper whose work has also been published in The Statesman, New York Times, The Hindu , Montreal Serai, BBC, Sanctuary Asia, Saevus, Down To Earth and Nature India online. He is the former coordinator of the Indian Zoo Inquiry project sponsored by Zoocheck Canada and has attended the Principles and Practice Training course at Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. He did his Masters thesis on British zoos at the University of Westminster. He has worked at the Wildlife Trust of India, TRAFFIC India and is currently Wildlife Research Manager in India for World Animal Protection. He has contributed to several books, including ‘The Jane Effect’, a biographical tribute to Jane Goodall by Marc Bekoff and Dale Peterson and ‘Indira Gandhi : A Life In Nature’ by Jairam Ramesh. He is the author of the book, ‘Dreaming In Calcutta and Channel Islands’ published in 2015.
Amrita Anand is in her 4th year of Ph.D. in Genetics and Genomics at the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston. She studies the reprogramming potential of certain key factors in the regeneration of mouse inner ear hair cells. She has been actively pursuing Science communication over the last three years as she enjoys bridging the gap between scientists and non-experts. As an editor, she wants to make science more accessible to the public and also hopes the hard work behind the science gets due credit.
Illustrator: Arghya Manna is a comics artist, illustrator, and a Ph.D. dropout. He began his career as a doctoral student at Bose Institute, India. He had been working on Tumor Cell migration in a 3D environment. Along with this, he was an active participant in several projects related to tumor immunology and cancer stem cell. After leaving the lab without bagging the degree Arghya found refuge in art and got involved in drawing comics. He is an enthusiast in History of Science and has been running a blog named “Drawing History of Science”. Arghya wishes to engage the readers of history and science with the amalgamation of images and texts.
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