Background
Druyan was born in Queens, New York, the daughter of Pearl A. (Goldsmith) and Harry Druyan, who co-owned a knitware firm.
journalist writer film producer
Druyan was born in Queens, New York, the daughter of Pearl A. (Goldsmith) and Harry Druyan, who co-owned a knitware firm.
She was a co-writer of the 1980 Public Broadcasting Service documentary series Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan (1934–1996), whom she married in 1981. She is the creator/producer/writer of the follow-up, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. She was in charge of music selections that were included with the pioneering spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.
Druyan was one of the three writers of the television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, along with Carl Sagan and Steven Soter, and a producer for the motion picture Contact.
In 2011, it was announced that Druyan would be part of the writing and production teams for a sequel to Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, to be called Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which began airing in March 2014. Episodes premiered on Fox and also aired on National Geographic Channel on the same night.
Druyan and Sagan cowrote the books Comet, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and sections of The Demon-Haunted World. She also wrote the updated introduction to Sagan"s book The Cosmic Connection, the epilogue of Billions and Billions, and her own novel, A Famous Broken Heart.
Druyan was responsible for the selection of the music on the Voyager Golden Record for the exploratory missions of the Solar System — Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.
Druyan has served on the Board of Directors of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) for over 10 years and was president from 2006 to 2010. In an interview with Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post, Druyan stated that her early interest in science stemmed from a fascination with Karl Marx. Achenbach commented that "She had, at the time, rather vaporous standards of evidence," a reference to her belief in the ancient astronauts of Erich von Däniken and the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky pertaining to the Solar System.
Druyan freely acknowledged her past views and also said that they changed dramatically after marrying Carl Sagan.