Ann Druyan

Ann Druyan (born 13 June 1949 in Queens, New York City, United States) is an American activist, writer, and television producer known for works on cosmology and popular science. She was married to Carl Sagan, with whom she had two children and co-authored several books. She was one of the writers of the series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage and of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

Druyan was born in the borough of Queens, about 16 km east of Manhattan. She is the daughter of Pearl A. Goldsmith and Harry Druyan.

The book Carl Sagan: a biography (by Ray Spangenburg and Diane Moser) mentions that Druyan was once engaged to Timothy Ferris, and they were to be married before she met Carl Sagan.

She was the third wife of the late Carl Sagan; they married in July 1981. They had two children together: Alexandra Rachel "Sasha" Sagan (b. 1982) and Samuel Democritus "Sam" Sagan (b. 1991).

On the unmanned interstellar spacecraft Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 (launched in August and September 1977, respectively), a project led by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan was responsible for deciding which musical and pictorial messages were included on the phonograph record that was carried on both probes. If the spacecraft are never intercepted, they are expected to travel forever.

Together with her husband she co-authored Murmurs of the Earth (1978), Comet (1985), Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1993) and portions of The Demon-Haunted World (1995). She also wrote the introduction to the updated edition of The Cosmic Connection (1973) and the epilogue to Billions & Billions (1997), both by Carl Sagan. She is the author of the novel A Famous Broken Heart.

In 2006 she edited and published The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, a posthumous compilation of Sagan's Gifford Lectures on natural theology delivered as a visiting lecturer in 1985.

She has contributed to periodicals such as the New York Sunday Magazine, Reader's Digest, and Discover, among others.

Druyan was one of the three writers of the acclaimed television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980), together with Carl Sagan and Steven Soter, and served as a producer on the film Contact (1997), adapted from the novel by Carl Sagan (1985).

Druyan is a principal executive and co-founder of Cosmos Studios. In 2009 a series of podcasts titled At Home in the Cosmos with Ann Druyan was released, in which she described her work, the life of her husband Carl Sagan, and their marriage.

On 5 August 2011 it was announced that Druyan and Seth MacFarlane would be part of the writing and production teams for the follow-up to Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, titled Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which aired on Fox in early 2014.^[1]

She was also a writer and producer for the third season of Cosmos, Cosmos: Possible Worlds, which premiered in March 2020. That season was based in part on her book of the same name and aims to offer a hopeful message for humanity.

In November 2006 Druyan spoke at Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival.

In January 2007 she served as a juror at the Sundance Film Festival, helping to select the winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for films about science and technology.

In August 2014, together with Steven Soter, she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.^[2]

She received the Richard Dawkins Award in 2004, and has served on the board of directors of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) for more than ten years, including a term as its president from 2006 to 2010. Regarding life after death, Druyan has said about her late husband that "he never sought refuge in illusions," and that they both knew they would not meet again. ^[3]