In 1980 I was 22 years old and a heck of a lot thinner than I am today. My main interest back then was rock and roll… I was pretty proficient on the guitar and loved to play along with my favorite bands when I dropped one of their records on the turntable. I also thought Carl Sagan was one of the coolest guys in the world. Sagan hosted a new series on PBS titled Cosmos and from the first episode I was hooked. As a youngster I had been fascinated with astronomy. I had several telescopes and devoured any books I could find on the subject.

Over time my interest waned as I moved on to other things. But now here was Sagan, suave in his red turtleneck and buff jacket, surrounded by special effects and Vangelis music and telling everyone (but especially me) about how the cosmos is everything that ever was, everything that is, and everything that ever will be. Heady stuff. I'm still a great admirer of Carl Sagan, primarily because he did something I see as immensely important: he popularized science and with patience and good humor brought into people's homes. He did it through Cosmos, most obviously, but he also did it every time he popped up on The Tonight Show and talked with celebrity fluidity about what was going on in the universe.

He was the people's scientist. Getting science in front of people in a way they can understand — without speaking down to them — is the way to get people to support science, and to understand that science is neither beyond their comprehension nor hostile to their beliefs. There need to be scientists and popularizers of good science who are of good will, who have patience and humor, and who are willing to sit with those who are skeptical or unknowing of science and show how science is already speaking their language.

Sagan knew how to do this; he was uncommonly good at it. I have an idealized version of Carl Sagan in my head, of course, one that is notably absent any number of flaws that the real Carl Sagan had to have had simply because he was human. My connection to Sagan comes from some limited number of hours of television and a finite number of books, and in both cases the man was edited for my consumption. What I do know is that I like his ideas. I like his love of science. I like his faith in humanity. I like how he saw us reaching for things greater than ourselves, because it was in our nature and because it was a fulfillment of our nature. I like how he shared his enthusiasm for the entire universe with everyone, and believed that everyone could share in that enthusiasm.

Dr. Sagan left us much too soon – he was only 62 when he died of bone marrow cancer in 1996. However, he did leave behind some great printed works, and his television series can still be found on DVD. Even if astronomy or astrophysics are subjects that doesn't interest you, Sagan wrote on topics as diverse as the evolution of the human brain to morality and the abortion debate. Reading the above, it seems like a tribute to be given at a funeral, written 12 years too late. But for some reason tonight, I had the urge to write about a great scientist, author and human being, and to share it with whoever might happen to stumble upon it in their web travels. Thank you, Carl, for making me wonder again after I thought I had grown too jaded to do so.