For Carl

Here I am, sitting in an internet cafe in the heart of Budapest for the last time. There is so much I didn't do and so many things I didn't say. For future Budapest Semesters in Mathematics students, here's my advice:
* Take the classes that work for you. The course work here is very difficult, and I saw many students become miserable as they tried to keep up with a schedule that was too demanding. Part of the learning is becoming acclimated to a completely different environment. If it means taking one less math course but spending more time seeing plays or dining out, so be it. You will have learned more in the end.
* Take the class called Elementary Problem Solving. The title of it scared a lot of people off because it seemed so trivial, but in reality, it was an opportunity for me to be exposed to so many interesting subjects. For example, before that class, I had it firmly fixed in my head that I hated game theory because it was only for computer scientists. Now, I realized I actually really enjoy it, thanks to Elementary Problem Solving.
* Take the intensive language course prior to the math classes. It does cost extra, but it gives you a chance to form immediate bonds with your fellow students, which will become increasingly important as the semester goes on. You also learn survival Hungarian: things like numbers, "hello", "goodbye", and "where is the bathroom."
* Take a lot of pictures right away. Things will have not lost their ambiance, and you will also be okay with appearing as a tourist. Right now I'd rather crawl into a hole than look like a tourist since I've been here for so long. I rarely take pictures of Budapest any more.
*Bring peanut butter with you. I know you can buy it at certain places, like Tesco or some organic markets, but it took me a long time to discover these places, and right at the beginning of your time here, you might need something familiar, and a peanut butter sandwich is one of the best remedies for this homesickness.

Hopefully that will help someone, someday. Rather than getting sentimental, I decided to end this blog with the paper I wrote for my History of Math class. I realized that Carl Sagan was the reason I got into math and communication, and so it's only fitting that his story closes my account of my semester of Hungarian mathematics. My information came entirely from www.carlsagan.com, and www.wikipedia.com. I realize wikipedia is not a valid source, but I took only information that was cited.

Carl Sagan was one of the most influential scientists of our time. He had the gift of communication; not only was he brilliant, making huge strides in many disciplines, he successfully communicated his ideals to the general public. Carl Sagan is possibly most widely known for two of his publications. One, Cosmos, published in 1980, was not only the best selling science book published in English, but was also made into a mini-series that aired in 60 countries. This piece of work encompassed much of the known history of the universe up until its publishing. It started with the smallest particles and explained their relationship to the physical world, working all the way up to the principles of supernovae and black holes. The film production embraced the important and most interesting parts of the book. Carl Sagan himself starred in and narrated all 13 episodes, coining a recognizable method of describing large quantities, that is, “billions and billions.”
While Cosmos was a brilliant display of Sagan’s knowledge and his ability to place it within the public realm, his true passion lay within astronomy, as is revealed in the second book formerly mentioned, Contact. This work delved into the unknown, hypothesizing the consequences of an alien message received by Americans. These ramifications included religious outcries, political and economic issues, and of course, the mathematics behind all astronomy and astrophysics. For me, it was reading this book at the age of 13 that made me want to study higher mathematics. One of the main principles included in Contact is that the message received came in the form of prime numbers, such numbers never occurring naturally by any phenomena. This idea struck my fancy and hooked me into mathematics. Like Cosmos, this book was also made into a major motion picture starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey. Although Sagan died during the production of this movie, his work was carried out by his longtime spouse and friend, Ann Druyan, to whom he credits much of his work. Once again, Dr. Sagan successfully made his ideals available to the general public.
I call him Dr. Sagan, because he indeed had a Ph.D. as well as having received 22 honorary degrees from colleges and universities across the nation due to his contributions to many different fields of study. While Cosmos and Contact were often peoples’ first tastes of Sagan, he has worked on many more projects. Since the 1950’s, Dr. Sagan was a consultant to NASA, briefing the Apollo astronauts and experimenting on such space craft such as the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo. Indeed, many facts that almost everyone learns in early schooling regarding characteristics of planets were discovered by Carl Sagan. For example, it was he that recognized that the extremely high climate on Venus is in fact due to the acute greenhouse effect, very similar in principle to that on Earth. He also realized that the seasons on Mars were due to dust blowing, and that Titan (a moon of Saturn) houses organic molecules.
At the time of his death, Sagan was working at the Laboratory for Planetary Studies, based at Cornell University, as the David Duncan professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences. However, aside from this prestigious position, he twice earned Distinguished Public Services medal, the Apollo Achievement award, and the medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, all from NASA. The National Academy of Sciences awarded Sagan their highest honor: The Public Welfare Medal. According to this bureau, “Carl Sagan has been enormously successful in communicating the wonder and importance of science. His ability to capture the imagination of millions and to explain difficult concepts in understandable terms is a magnificent achievement.” Sagan was the President of the Planetary Society, which is the largest space-public-interest group. He has an Asteroid 2709 Sagan named after him as well as the landing site for the Pathfinder on Mars, he was awarded the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal from the Soviet Cosmonauts Federation and he received the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award from the American Astronautical Society. Sagan was the Chairman of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, and chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also was President of the Planetology section of the American Geophysical Union. While most of these awards and honors seem to center around astronomy, he was received awards and accreditation for his research on the consequences of nuclear war, and is given credit to helping reverse the nuclear arms race. He left the legacy of the Carl Sagan Foundation, which strives toward continuing public science-education on the entire planet. Not only does this foundation preach the merits of science, but it also reminds the people of the dangers of misuse of technologies. Sagan always had very extreme beliefs that science could not give all the answers. Indeed, he was quoted widely for saying, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
Sagan was always very interested in the question of whether or not there is life in the Universe. In fact, he was such a public figure in this area, that on his birthday in 2001, NASA dedicated the Ames Research Center’s site for the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Cosmos. He studied the famous Drake Equation, which states that the number of advanced civilizations in the Universe with which communication is possible (N) is equal to the rate of star formation in the galaxy times the fraction of stars with planets times the average number of planets that can support life per star times the fraction of these planets that develop life at some point times the fraction of THOSE planets that develop intelligent life at some point times the fraction of civilizations that become technologically advanced enough to release detectable signs of their existence into space times the length of time these civilizations send signals into space. These values, while educated guesses, are merely guesses. The figures of each parameter have been changed and recalculated many times, and currently the value for N is .0000001. From a mathematical and hypothetical point of view, should any of these values be 0, N would be 0, proving there to be no life in the universe. However, that is assuming his equation to be accurate which no one can know. Regardless, Sagan was an advocate of it’s accuracy, but he recognized the Fermi Paradox, stating that while the Drake equation guarantees extraterrestrial life, there is an extreme lack of evidence for it. Using these facts and hypotheses, Sagan believed that all life forms have a tendency to destroy themselves. Thus originated his interest and research on the long-term consequences of a nuclear holocaust.
While Sagan popularized the ideas of alien intelligence, he didn’t, ironically, believe that “UFO’s” were signs of intelligence, or even real. However, he made popular the Bussard Ramjet as a way of showing the total uncertainty of the entire extraterrestrial life situation. The Bussard Ramjet is a hypothesized space craft of the 1960’s which worked upon the principle of compressing hydrogen from surrounding interstellar medium and fusing it, using the remains as the exhaust of a rocket and a means of acceleration. While this vehicle is far-fetched and highly advanced, Sagan used it to note that one could feasibly travel celestially without violating the physical constraints of the universe. Sagan quoted, “"I believe the numbers work out in such a way that UFO's as interstellar vehicles are extremely unlikely, but I think it is an equally bad mistake to say that interstellar space flight is impossible."
Carl Sagan died of pneumonia in 1996, after going through highly advanced medical procedures for months. He had a severe blood disease, often called pre-lukemia, that makes the body more susceptible to infections. He received such break-through health care only because he had made such a name for himself, and this troubled him. Thus, once of his legacies is The Carl Sagan Discovery Center, built with the cooperation of the Children’s Health Fund. It is dedicated to providing health care regardless of financial status. This center incorporates the most recent technology to make sure that children receive top notch health care.
Another one of his legacies, the one that supports the Discovery Center, is the Carl Sagan foundation, which strives to teach young people using the best science and technology. Sagan always wanted to make sure children had the opportunity to learn about the natural world, and this nonprofit organization in Sagan’s name assures that public science education continues.
Carl Sagan chose to preface a chapter in his book Contact with a quote by Vincent Van Gogh. I choose to end with it. “Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?” This was Carl Sagan’s driving question, and perhaps the question that makes his ideas so appealing to the rest of us.

Thank you for reading this account. Viszontlátásra!