May 27, 1907 – Birth of Rachel Carson, Marine Biologist Who Advanced the Global Environmental Movement

Rachel Carson, born on this day in history on a family farm in Pennsylvania, is best known for her book Silent Spring, originally published in 1962.

As a child, Rachel was an avid reader and published her own story when she was ten. At the Pennsylvania College for Women, she majored in biology while continuing to write. As a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, she studied zoology and genetics. Although she intended to get a doctorate degree, she was forced to leave school to help support her family during the Great Depression. She at first took a temporary position with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, writing radio copy for a series of weekly educational broadcasts focused on aquatic life. The Bureau of Fisheries was impressed enough by her that in 1936, she became the second woman hired by the Bureau of Fisheries for a full-time professional position, as a junior aquatic biologist.

Rachel Carson, 1940
Fish & Wildlife Service employee photo

For the Bureau, she wrote pamphlets on conservation and natural resources and edited scientific articles, but in her free time she turned to writing articles and books for the general public.

In mid-1945, Carson first encountered the subject of DDT, a revolutionary new pesticide — lauded as the “insect bomb” after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — that was only beginning to undergo tests for safety and ecological effects. Editors found the subject unappealing, however, and she published nothing on DDT until 1962.

In early 1950, Oxford University Press expressed interest in Carson’s book proposal for a life history of the ocean, spurring her to complete by early 1950 the manuscript of what would become The Sea Around Us. Chapters appeared in Science Digest and The Yale Review — with one chapter winning the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s George Westinghouse Science Writing Prize. Nine chapters were serialized in The New Yorker beginning June 1951 and the book was published July 2, 1951. The Sea Around Us remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 86 weeks, was abridged by Reader’s Digest, won the 1952 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the John Burroughs Medal. It also led to two honorary doctorates for Carson. The Sea’s success led to the republication of Under the Sea Wind, which became a bestseller itself. With success came financial security, and in 1952 Carson was able to give up her job in order to concentrate on writing full time.

She was driven by the belief that human beings were an integral part of nature but distinguished by their immense power to alter it, which could have irreversible deleterious consequences.

In Silent Spring, published in 1962, Carson took on the $800 million chemical pesticide industry. She not only documented the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides, but accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry’s marketing claims unquestioningly.

The book was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, but inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the eventual banning of DDT and other pesticides.

Carson died in 1964, and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter. Her legacy lives on through the advances she helped spur in the global environmental movement, including the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In 1994, a new edition of Silent Spring was published in which Vice President Al Gore wrote the introduction, and in 2012 Silent Spring was designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society for its role in the development of the modern environmental movement. It was also named one of the 25 greatest science books of all time by the editors of “Discover Magazine.”