BOSTON -- Astronomer Carl Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan, received the Helen Caldicott Leadership Award Sunday for their efforts to reverse the nuclear arms race, the Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament said.
Caldicott, founder of WAND and a leader in the movement to halt the arms race, presented the couple with the award -- a glass vase with an inscription -- during WAND's fifth annual Mother's Day Ball at Copley Place.
The event, which will benefit WAND's educational efforts, topped off a three-month national grass-roots and media campaign for peace.
'Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan have made outstanding contributions to increasing public awareness of central issues of peace in the nuclear age,' WAND Executive Director Calien Lewis said. 'Their efforts to raise these issues through their distinguished careers and personal commitments have inspired people nationwide and for this reason we honor their leadership with the Caldicott Award.'
Past recipients include actresses Jane Alexander, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Sally Field and Marlo Thomas, singer Yoko Ono and writer Alice Walker.
Sagan is internationally known as an astronomer, scientific researcher and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He is a leading critic of the Strategic Defense Initiative supported by the Reagan administration.
Druyan, an author, lecturer and television producer, was co-writer of the award-winning television series 'Cosmos' that her husband hosts.
An active nuclear arms opponent, Druyan has helped organize demonstrations at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site and establish an American seismic network in the Soviet Union.
