Carson, Rachel

Carson, Rachel (1907–1964), nature writer, environmentalist.Raised on a farm in western Pennsylvania, Carson attended the Pennsylvania College for Women and earned a master's degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University. In 1935, she went to work at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, producing numerous publications for the agency until she left in 1953 to write independently.

Carson's The Sea Around Us (1951), a hugely successful book about the oceans, was at once scientifically knowledgeable and compellingly lyrical. She is best known for Silent Spring (1962), an impassioned defense of unspoiled nature for its own sake and a powerful warning that the chemical despoliation of the environment, especially by the insecticide DDT, threatened human health. An international best‐seller, the book eloquently popularized the idea that human beings must recognize themselves as part of nature rather than purely as masters of it.

In Silent Spring, which first appeared in the New Yorker magazine, Carson lucidly explained the intricate interconnectedness of nature and how chemical herbicides or insecticides applied by spraying the earth or the air could diffuse through the local soil, then be carried through ground and surface water to distant areas and accumulate in the wild food chain. Her book roused a barrage of ridicule and denunciation from the chemical industry, parts of the food industry, academic scientists allied with both, and some powerful sectors of the media. However, Silent Spring's carefully documented analyses were reviewed and endorsed by the President's Science Advisory Committee, and Carson's views helped inspire the environmental protection movement that began in the 1960s.
See also Agriculture: Since 1920; Environmentalism.

Bibliography

Martha Freeman, ed., Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952–1964, 1995.
Paul Brooks , The House of Life: Rachel Carson at Work, with Selections from Her Writings Published and Unpublished, 1972.

Daniel J. Kevles