How old was carl sagan when he died

Professor Yervant Terzian of Cornell University passed away peacefully in the early hours of November 25, , after a long and debilitating illness. He was an active and always extremely enthusiastic member in his research communities, an inspired teacher, and a gifted administrator. Yervant is probably best remembered for his tremendous capability to infect both students and everyone he knew or met with his deep and genuine excitement and love for astronomy.

Yervant is survived by his wife, Patricia Fernandez de Castro, children, Sevan and Tamar, and four grandchildren. Yervant, an American astronomer of Armenian heritage, was born in Alexandria Egypt in and lived in Greece for much of his childhood. Yervant then joined the scientific staff of the newly completed foot radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory and spent the remainder of his career there and, starting in , on the faculty at Cornell.

Planetary nebula size

The first author of this article was his first PhD student, very frequent collaborator, and — like many his other former students - remained in close contact with Yervant until his death. I shall always treasure his sincere interest, thoughtfulness, and timely advice during our long friendship. Yervant is best known to astronomers for his pioneering papers on the radio emission of H II regions, planetary nebulae, and normal galaxies.

Starting in the s Prof. Terzian worked with George Helou, Steve Schneider, and Edwin Salpeter, his students, and many others on studies of intergalactic HI clouds in clusters, binary-galaxy dynamics, and rotation curves of galaxies in pairs and groups using Arecibo.

Planetary nebula temperature

Terzian began as Chair of the Astronomy Department in , a position that he held for 20 very productive years. He was also a Scientific Editor for the Astrophysical Journal starting in However, the achievement of which he was most proud was raising over two million dollars for the Armenian National Science and Education Fund, a fund that launched many successful research projects in his adopted home country.

In addition many awards and honors, Prof. Terzian was elected a Foreign Member of the Armenian Academy of Sciences in and received the Gold Medal, the "highest honor for scientific achievement," from the Government of the Republic of Armenia in