“Being a scientist means you never have to grow up.”
Jill watches and listens for signs of extraterrestrial life; her favorite thing about the movie, “E.T.” is that “he gets drunk on terrestrial beer.”
Jill was the basis for the character, “Ellie,” in the novel and film versions of Carl Sagan’s “Contact”; she loves Jodie Foster, but is peeved that they got some of the math wrong!
Jill Tarter is an astronomer and the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in California. SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and that’s exactly what Jill’s been doing for almost her entire professional life. She was also the basis for the main character in Carl Sagan’s novel “”Contact”” and the character played by Jodie Foster in the film adaptation of the book.
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