WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 47do the math, which I related to. I loved
that he had Maxwell to extrapolate his
genius into mathematical equations.
The fact that he was a Sandemanian
— he was a fundamentalist Christian
and working in a laboratory with one
of the most outspoken atheists of the
day, and the two men adored each
other — that was amazing. I just was
fascinated by him because he seemed,
to me, to be a man who wrestled with
depression, and yet was probably one of
the most productive minds in human
history. So that’s how I got into
electromagnetism.
Of course, if you understand what
Faraday did, the way he understood it
in non-mathematical terms, then that’s a
doorway into the physics content and
into Einstein, who of course memorably
kept a portrait of Faraday above him
as he worked. For me, Faraday was a
three-fer, and I wanted the world to
love him as deeply as I do.
Astronomy: That’s fantastic. Will the
current season also have a mixture of
astronomy and other allied sciences?
Druyan: Yes. It has a tremendous
amount of biology, of neuroscience, and
botany. We venture into many different
fields. There’s also some quantum phys-
ics. We tried to be far-ranging — and
one of the best stories that we tell is
about how science required a reunifica-
tion of different scientific fields in order
to explore the world of our solar system
and beyond.
I’m very proud of this thesis becauseI haven’t really encountered it anywhere
else. Yet, Carl was very much both a
product and an actor in that — a partici-
pant and an actor in that change at that
time, when geologists and chemists and
biologists had no interaction whatsoever.
There wasn’t a single professional jour-
nal on Earth in which a biologist and a
geologist and a chemist professionally
had a conversation.This was when Carl was coming of
age as a scientist. So, again, we get to tell
that story as well as that much larger
story of science, and how science
matured and changed as a result of our
first baby steps into the cosmos.Astronomy: Carl was really there
at the dawn of the marriage of
astronomy and chemistry, of so-called
cosmochemistry.Druyan: Exactly. He was the only shared
student of both Harold Urey and Gerard
Kuiper.Astronomy: Ye s.Druyan: The two people who hated each
other so much.Astronomy: Right.In the 1970s, Carl Sagan
collaborated with fellow
astrophysicist Ed Salpeter to
design life-forms with plausible
evolutionary histories for long-
term survival in the roiling
clouds of Jupiter. Among them
were “floaters,” vast hydrogen
blimps pumping helium and
heavier gases out of their
interior to retain only the
lightest gas, hydrogen.We tried to be far-ranging — and one of the best stories that we tell
is about how science required a reunification of different scientific
fields in order to explore the world of our solar system and beyond.