RACHEL CARSON

Founder of the Modern Environmental Movement

In 1962, Rachel Carson published her famous book Silent Spring. This event shattered the illusions of people's attitudes towards our environment. Until then, the environment to most people concerned such things as wilderness preservation or the protection of certain animals. Carson showed convincing evidence that long-lasting chemical pesticides, such as DDT, had already caused destruction among many kinds of living things, and quite possibly irreversible damage in humans.

Rachel Louise Carson was born in Springdale, PA, on May 27, 1907, and died on April 14, 1964. She graduated from the Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College) in Pittsburgh in 1929, and received her M.A. degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1932. She came from a poor family that was dependent on her from the time of her graduation from college, in fact following her to Baltimore when she went to graduate school. Largely because of these family responsibilities, she was never able to receive her PhD. She taught at the University of Maryland and studied during summers at the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, MA. Here she began to develop her love of the sea.

Carson took a job with the Bureau of Fisheries (later the Fish and Wildlife Services) in Washington instead of the career in research that she had wanted, achieving the title of chief of publications. Again because of family responsibilities, she left this job and was forced to work largely at home. Fortunately, being a writer, this was possible. Her education and experience served her well in being able to communicate science to the general public. She was both a scientist and an author, writing articles and books, both popular and scientific, on nature and environmental topics. One of her books,The Sea Around Us, (published in 1951) won the National Book Award and was on the nonfiction best-seller list for 39 weeks. This success gave her both the freedom to write full time and the fame to pursue whatever subjects interested her.

As early as 1945, Carson was worried about the effects of the wide use of various pesticides. She had trouble getting any articles published on this subject, however. Then, she combined her expertise as a scientist with her talents as a writer with the publishing of the famous book, Silent Spring. First published in serial form in The New Yorker and then as a book, it caused a harsh reaction from many places, particularly the chemical industry who tried to dismiss her and her scientific findings because, among other things, she was a woman.

After Silent Spring set off a storm of controversy, President Kennedy set up a commission to study the effects of such pesticides. The commission discovered that Carson's findings were accurate, and eventually DDT was banned in 1972. It also led to scientific and public concern over the general use of pesticides and other chemicals and the danger people pose to themselves and to the environment. These bans are the direct reason why birds such as the bald eagle and peregrine falcon are now able to come off the endangered species list.

Recently, especially as we look back on the century, there have been many honors for Rachel Carson. In 1999, she was chosen as one of Time Magazine's "Top 20 Most Influential Scientists and Thinkers of the 20th Century", and one of the five - along with Jonas Salk - featured on its cover (March 29, 1999). Silent Spring was ranked as the fifth most important book of the 20th century, and also was fifth on The Modern Library's 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Century. U.S. News and World Report chose Carson as one of the 25 Americans Who Shaped the Modern Era, and Carson was also chosen as one of the 20 Greatest Innovators of the Century by American Heritage Magazine. The article stated that Carson's "...impact was so immense and focused so completely and effectively on technology that the gathering would have seemed incomplete without her."

In newsman Walter Cronkite's biography A Reporter's Life(1996), he states that the proudest moment of his career at CBS news was a series called "Can the World be Saved?", which was inspired by Silent Spring. The book, he states, "awakened us to all the forms of pollution threatening our atmosphere and our very lives."

Carson contracted cancer just after beginning Silent Spring, and she died from it not long after its publication. Carson is remembered so much for her work on that book that perhaps, sadly, she will be forgotten as one of the greatest nature writers of the United States.