Eric Burgess was an English freelance consultant, lecturer and journalist, who wrote about the Pioneer program

Pioneer program

The Pioneer program is a series of United States unmanned space missions that was designed for planetary exploration. There were a number of such missions in the program, but the most notable were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, which explored the outer planets and left the solar system...

 of space missions since the first tests in 1957. He was the science correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor in the period of many of the planetary probe launches, and was often the senior science reporter present at many of those events.

Burgess was a fellow

Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

 of the Royal Astronomical Society

Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society is a learned society that began as the Astronomical Society of London in 1820 to support astronomical research . It became the Royal Astronomical Society in 1831 on receiving its Royal Charter from William IV...

 and British Interplanetary Society

British Interplanetary Society

The British Interplanetary Society founded in 1933 by Philip E. Cleator, is the oldest space advocacy organisation in the world whose aim is exclusively to support and promote astronautics and space exploration.-Structure:...

, and an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics is the professional society for the field of aerospace engineering. The AIAA was founded in 1963 from the merger of two earlier societies: the American Rocket Society , founded in 1930 as the American Interplanetary Society , and the Institute...

. He is credited with the original idea that the Pioneer probes should carry a message for extraterrestrial

Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...

 intelligences. He approached Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...

 about his idea, which eventually resulted in the Pioneer plaque

Pioneer plaque

The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminium plaques which were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 are intercepted by extraterrestrial life...

.