CARL SAGAN, POPULARIZED ASTRONOMY FOR AMERICANS, WON PULITZER PRIZE.

Byline: Associated Press 

Carl Sagan, who rhapsodized about a universe populated by ``billions and billions'' of stars, was a rare star himself: a celebrity astronomer who helped make the vast unknown a little less mysterious.

Sagan died of pneumonia Friday at age 62 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He had suffered from the bone marrow disease myelodisplasia for two years and had a bone-marrow transplant in 1995.

He leaves behind a generation of Americans inspired by his enthusiastic lectures, books and documentaries about space and life.

``Sagan understood the need to bring science into American living rooms, to show its relevance to our everyday lives and to share the excitement of discovery,'' said Neal Lane, director of the National Science Foundation.

Sagan, who lived in Ithaca, N.Y., won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 1978 for ``The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence.''

In 1980, his acclaimed 13-part Public Broadcasting Service series ``Cosmos'' became the most-watched limited series in the history of American public television, a record since surpassed by ``The Civil War.''

Co-written with his wife, Ann Druyan, the series retraced the 15 billion years of cosmic evolution that have transformed matter into life. It won three Emmys and a Peabody Award, and a companion book was a New York Times best seller for more than a year, including 15 weeks at No. 1.

The series has been seen by more than 500 million people in 60 countries, and it made Sagan a celebrity, caricatured in cartoons and parodied by comics who seized on his references to ``billions and billions'' of stars.

A Cornell University professor with more than a score of honorary degrees and a decorated NASA adviser, Sagan had the rare gift of being able to communicate his enchantment with science to the masses.

Once asked to explain the public's interest, he said: ``They're not numskulls. Thinking scientifically is as natural as breathing.''

Sagan's research focused mostly on the chemistry of the planets. But he also contributed to the search for habitable worlds and intelligent life beyond the solar system, as well as theories about life's origins.

Born in New York on Nov. 9, 1934, Sagan said he fully expected to follow his Russian-born father into the garment industry but began to chart a career in astronomy while at high school in Rahway, N.J.

In 1971, he became a full professor at Cornell, where his lectures drew standing-room-only crowds. His research dipped into the greenhouse effect on Venus and the environmental consequences of nuclear war, among other things.

Sagan helped design robotic missions for NASA, and played leading roles in the Mariner, Viking, Voyager and Galileo and Galileo expeditions.

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