So when I was growing up as a young girl—in
Wisconsin actually—I was ten years old when
Carl Sagan’s show Cosmos came on public
broadcasting.
And as a ten year old kind of living in rural
Wisconsin I had never really met an astronomer.
That’s not someone you routinely meet.
Whenever people tell me, you know, you don’t
really seem like an astronomer.
The wonderful next thing to ask is, “How
many astronomers do you know?”
So my vision of what an astronomer was was
this man on this television show, on public
television, Carl Sagan.
And the thing that Carl did better than anybody
else I’d ever seen was this emotional connection
to the science.
He loved to tell stories.
He would tell stories about the history but
also it was from him that I learned where
all of the atoms in my body come from.
The fact that they were all formed in stars.
And when Carl talks about that on the show
I mean we sort of made a joke that there are
these things called “Carl moments” where
Carl sort of gazes dramatically off into space
and the camera sort of close up, you know,
close up on his face.
And you can see him sort of emoting at how
wonderful this is.
And these days, you know, decades later those
scenes seem a little bit silly and a little
bit contrived.
But as a child I was taken along for this
incredible emotional journey.
Carl was a real rock star.
He had this charisma and people would just
listen to what he was saying and they would
love to follow along with his stories.
And that became to me the image of what a
scientist was, what an astronomer was, was
somebody that could tell the stories of the
universe.
So I never ended up meeting Carl.
I always wanted to.
He unfortunately died very young, he died
in his early 60s and I was a graduate student
at the time.
I always figured I would see him at some astronomy
conference, I’d somehow, you know, wander
past him at one of these scientific meetings
and tell him how much that his show had meant
to me.
But I never got that chance.
I never left though that idea, that what a
scientist really does is tell stories.
It’s about the narrative and it’s about
the emotions.
And Carl did that better than anyone I’ve
ever seen.
