7th edition of the Nat award honours Ann Druyan, one of the top science popularizers of our time.
- The writer, screenwriter and producer was creative director of the Voyager Golden Records (NASA), a compilation of sounds and images representative of humanity intended to inform any possible extraterrestrial civilisations about human culture.
- Ann Druyan co-wrote – with her late husband Carl Sagan – the series Cosmos, A Personal Voyage (1980), and launched two further series: Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014) and Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020).
On Wednesday 23 October at 6.30 pm, the Nat award ceremony was held at the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona in the Parc del Fòrum (pl. Leonardo da Vinci, 4-5). During the event, Ann Druyan will gave the lecture “At the Gateway to the Stars” (in English with simultaneous interpretation in Catalan).
The Nat award was created in 2018 to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona. It grants five thousand euros to distinguished individuals or institutions who have effected a new approach to the popularization of natural sciences that has stimulated the creation of scientific vocations and the conservation of nature. The Premi Nat is awarded annually to an individual or institution in the local or international arena.
This edition of the Nat Award is presented in collaboration with the Catalan Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació.
The Nat award jury comprises:
- Mònica Artigas, journalist, subdirector of National Geographic’s Magazine Division.
- Carlota Bruna, influencer, environmental and animal rights activist.
- David Bueno, director of the Chair of Neuroeducation at the University of Barcelona.
- Carles Lalueza, director of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona, researcher at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology.
- Gemma Marfany, professor of Genetics at the University of Barcelona.
- Juli Peretó, professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Valencia.
Ann Druyan
New York, 1949
Ann Druyan is a writer, screenwriter, activist, producer and filmmaker specialising in the popularization of science. Druyan served for 10 years as the secretary-elect of the Federation of American Scientists, and began her writing career with the publication of the novel A Famous Broken Heart. She was creative director of NASA’s interstellar messaging project Voyager Golden Records. Her mission was to compile a collection of sounds and images representative of Earth and humanity, which still travel on gold records in the unmanned Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft launched in 1977. The content of these records is intended to inform possible extraterrestrial civilisations about human culture.
Ann Druyan co-wrote – with her late husband Carl Sagan (1934–1996) – the television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980), one of the most successful science documentaries in the history of television, and one that shaped an entire generation. It won Peabody and Emmy awards and is estimated to have been seen by 400 million people worldwide.
The duo also co-wrote six best-sellers, including Comet, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, The Demon-Haunted World, Billions and Billions, and The Varieties of Scientific Experience. Druyan also co-created and co-produced the Warner Bros. feature film Contact, starring Jodie Foster and directed by Robert Zemeckis.
The Cosmos adventure went beyond the 1980s, as Druyan forged ahead with two more series: Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014), and Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020). The American popularizer served as lead executive producer, director and co-writer of these two sequels for the Fox Television and National Geographic networks. Like their forerunner, these science documentaries were recognised with Emmy and Peabody awards and viewed by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. A book of the series Cosmos: Possible Worlds was subsequently published under the same name. Currently, Ann Druyan is producing two feature films and writing her memoirs. In 2004, she was awarded the Richard Dawkins Prize.
At some 320 million kilometres distance from us an asteroid in perpetual orbit bears the name: Druyan 4970.