[X] My Assistant

[Steffen]

Which is in Your opinion the best Sagan biography ?

By The Way, is the DonDavis on this forum by any chance the Donald Davis of:
http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/SAGAN.html

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Below is a post of mine I dug up from September 2002 (in another group obviously) responding to someone else's claim (preceded by >) of Sagan's lack of scholarship. Of course, Sagan's CV was, I believe, over a hundred pages long.

======================================================

> It's interesting - despite all the respect people have for the man
> as a scientific thinker - the last time i checked
> www.carlsagan.com, there wasn't a single reference that i could
> find to a true scientific paper...

Frankly, I think that is a trite unfair to Sagan's memory, though I'm
not sure what your definition of a "true scientific paper" is.
However, even a cursory glance at the archives of [for example] the journal Science
(presumably this qualifies as a "true" science journal) turns up
several papers (a few listed below) where Sagan is a primary or co-
author (omitted are "spacecraft team" papers which typically have
more than a dozen authors):

Color and Chemistry on Triton (in Reports)
W. Reid Thompson, Carl Sagan
Science, New Series, Vol. 250, No. 4979. (Oct. 19, 1990), pp. 415-418.

Cyclic Octatomic Sulfur: A Possible Infrared and Visible Chromophore
in the Clouds of Jupiter (in Reports)
B. N. Khare, Carl Sagan
Science, New Series, Vol. 189, No. 4204. (Aug. 29, 1975), pp. 722-723.

Hot Hydrogen in Prebiological and Interstellar Chemistry (in Reports)
Carl Sagan, Ralph S. Becker
Science, New Series, Vol. 188, No. 4183. (Apr. 4, 1975), pp. 72-73.

Jovian Atmosphere: Structure and Composition between the Turbopause
and the Mesopause (in Reports)
Carl Sagan, Joseph Veverka, Lawrence Wasserman, James Elliot, William
Liller
Science, New Series, Vol. 184, No. 4139. (May 24, 1974), pp. 901-903.

Climatic Change on Mars (in Reports)
Carl Sagan, O. B. Toon, P. J. Gierasch
Science, New Series, Vol. 181, No. 4104. (Sep. 14, 1973), pp. 1045-
1049.

Earth and Mars: Evolution of Atmospheres and Surface Temperatures (in
Reports)
Carl Sagan, George Mullen
Science, New Series, Vol. 177, No. 4043. (Jul. 7, 1972), pp. 52-56.

Long-Wavelength Ultraviolet Photoproduction of Amino Acids on the
Primitive Earth (in Reports)
Carl Sagan, Bishun N. Khare
Science, New Series, Vol. 173, No. 3995. (Jul. 30, 1971), pp. 417-420.

Contamination of Mars
Carl Sagan, Elliott C. Levinthal, Joshua Lederberg
Science, New Series, Vol. 159, No. 3820. (Mar. 15, 1968), pp. 1191-
1196.

Jovian Atmosphere: Near-Ultraviolet Absorption Features (in Reports)
Carl Sagan, Tobias Owen, Jack A. Greenspan
Science, New Series, Vol. 159, No. 3813. (Jan. 26, 1968), pp. 448-450.

Martian Ionosphere: A Component Due to Solar Protons (in Reports)
Carl Sagan, Joseph Veverka
Science, New Series, Vol. 158, No. 3797. (Oct. 6, 1967), pp. 110-112.

[odave]

I've often had to scratch my head at the way some have just dumped all over Carl. Astronomy and other space sciences were a passing interest in my childhood, but that interest was permanently cemented when I watched Cosmos back when it first aired. Whatever his faults, he was a darned fine and inspiring communicator. I'll always be grateful for the way he opened up the universe to me.