Do we like Carl Sagan?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A decent record on the right side of every issue we could find, with one petty lawsuit and a thin record on some topics holding it off the top.
Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn in 1934. He got hooked on the stars at five, when his mother sent him to the library for books about them. Pulp science fiction and flying-saucer reports did the rest. He finished high school at 16, then went on to a physics degree and a PhD in astronomy.
The career arc is a ripper. He worked on instruments for NASA's Mariner 2 probe, studied Venus and Jupiter, and became a full professor at Cornell in 1971. He advised on Viking landing sites and helped craft the messages carried on the Pioneer and Voyager probes. Then came the book Dragons of Eden, which won him a Pulitzer, and the novel Contact.
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage made him a household name, and he co-founded the Planetary Society the same year, 1980. Cornell still calls him one of the most effective science communicators of all time, and in 2024 it held a 90th-birthday celebration. Nothing new has turned up on him lately beyond that sort of tribute, so there is no fresh scandal to report.
Now the harm check. We found no words of his against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or people of colour. We found no conspiracy theories or grievance campaigns either. We also found no culture-war grifting and no dodgy company. The record on those groups is thin rather than clean, and that is the honest caveat. What he did say loudly was about the planet: he co-wrote the 1983 nuclear winter paper, and he opposed Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.
His one proper scandal is a lawsuit. Apple code-named a Power Mac after him, and he objected in a 1994 letter, saying “My endorsement is not for sale.” Apple switched the name to BHA, short for Butt-Head Astronomer, and he sued. A court dismissed the suit over the insult, and the two sides settled in 1995, with Apple apologising for any unintended stress. It was a bit much, but he was the one being mocked, and he asked for nothing worse than his name back.
The only other black mark is a personality clash. In 1968 he briefly consulted on Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the gig ended quickly after a clash of personalities. Biographers note his fringe speculation on alien visits drew attention too. That is nowhere near a pattern of mistreating people.