Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson was one of the most well known scientist, advocate for nature and the environment and a writer. For the majority of her life she wrote about and studied what was around us. This allowed people to get a look into what was going on and how it affected them.

Carson was born in rural Springdale, Pennsylvania in 1907. She grew up in a small house and according to Linda Lear author of the website rachelcarson.org, Carson once said that her “mother introduced her to the world of loving nature that she expressed first as a writer and later as a student of marine biology.”

During her youth she explored the nature around her and wrote about it. Most of her explorations were around the farm she lived on. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Website, Carson was published in a children’s magazine at the age of 10.

Graduating from the “Pennsylvania College for Women in 1929, she studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory,” (Lear). After her undergraduate career she moved on to receive her Masters in Zoology from John Hopkins University in 1932. After college Carson would then move on to begin her career at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries.

At the Bureau of Fisheries she wrote “radio scripts during the Depression” (Lear) and most of them were about marine life. As she wrote the radio scripts, she was also writing for another “newspapers and magazines about considering the welfare of fish and as well as that of fishermen,” (FWS). These were published in the Baltimore Sun.

During these times, women were not equal and it was very rare for any woman to hold jobs other than factory working, let alone hold any high positions. Carson soon became Editor-in-Chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service during her 15 year career as a scientist and writer.

In 1937, Carson began what would make her known as a “naturalist and science writer for the public, writing about the ocean” (Lear). She published and article entitled “Undersea” for the Atlantic monthly. This article was the stepping stone for her first book she wrote entitled Under the Sea-Wind in 1942. From then on she wrote numerous books like The Sea Around Us in 1952 (which won a prize) and The Edge of the Sea in 1955.

Carson resigned from her job at the Fish and Wildlife Service and continued writing. “She wrote several other articles designed to teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world,” (Lear). Lear also said that in all of “Carson’s writings it was the view that all humans were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it.”

She focused on ecology and made other people aware of it too. In 1962 her last book Silent Spring was published. In this book she exposed how pesticides can be harmful to the ecosystem. Pesticides were being misused and she wanted people to see the harmful effects of them.

She was attacked and discredited for being against pesticides but she was only trying to inform people of the safe ways to use them. She had previously studied DDT (a synthetic pesticide) and its affects. After appearing in court about the issue Carson “called for new policies to help protect human health and the environment,” (Lear). DDT was banned and Carson became credited “with launching the contemporary environmental movement and awakening the concern by thinking Americans about the environment,” (FWS).

Carson died in 1964 from breast cancer. She has truly been influential woman. She devoted her life to being an advocate for a healthy and safe life for everyone.

http://www.rachelcarson.org/

http://www.fws.gov/northeast/rachelcarson/carsonbio.html