Had he beaten cancer and carried on, it would’ve been his 80th. Sagan wasn’t always a genial figure since it was disputed about the lawsuits he may or may not have filed against Johnny Carson, Apple, etc. He’s probably also marred for his three marriages. The Atheist Community may also consider him a coward for taking the Agnostic view; I have to agree there, Agnosticism is a cop out alongside the False Equivalence route.
However, Sagan was the first living Scientist I heard of and learned to admire. Einstein I discovered in the Seventies through an issue of Time. Like many in my generation, it was his PBS show Cosmos. The visuals were phenomenal and the facts were mind blowing. My parents had an ongoing subscription to National Geogrpahic then too, so his program was running alongside the huge stories of the Voyager probes reporting back their Jupiter findings. I think my parents would’ve reconsidered letting me watch Sagan if they knew it was a major factor in me becoming an Atheist. Hell, my mother was (probably still is) a raging opponent of Evolution.
As I grew older, Science began to take a back seat to the greater concerns teens have yet I never lost my love of Astronomy. I’m amazed how much I retained by college when I assisted my friend Helen with the inverse gravity formula. Seems odd that a three-dimensional situation is resolved by only squaring the number?
I thank Carl Sagan for being the great ambassador of Science. He helped bring a greater understanding to millions. Better than the egomaniacal hack Isaac Asimov ever could. Another legacy for Sagan is two immediate successors he has, Bill Nye the Science Guy and Neil DeGrasse-Tyson.
I wish he were alive though. We need more people like him who could articulate the facts to lay people and help us battle the morons in the American government, namely GOP Senators.