People and Organizations That Steel Our Heart

Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson was born in Springdale, Pa., in 1907, and learned early the beauty and serenity of nature. During her simple upbringing, Rachel’s mother instilled in her daughter a respect and value for the environment around her that would be a precursor for a series of publications that jumpstarted the environmental movement.

In addition to her love of nature, Rachel enjoyed writing so much that she entered into the Pennsylvania College for Women (which is now Chatham College) as an English major. Two years into her study she changed her major to Zoology after she found a passion for biological life in a junior year science class. She continued to submit poetry to periodicals, however, and had not yet found a way to combine her two passions. Rachel would graduate magna cum laude in 1929, and pursued her graduate studies at another school.

She received her master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932 and began teaching zoology at the University of Maryland. In 1935, she worked part-time for the U.S. Department of Fisheries, where she wrote science radio scripts. Only a year later, they hired her as a full-time junior aquatic biologist and began her 15-year career with the Department. To supplement her income, Rachel wrote articles for The Baltimore Sun, which would later turn into material for her major publications.

“Undersea” was Rachel’s first publication in a national magazine, Atlantic Monthly in 1937. This article, along with the ones she had been submitting to the local newspaper, became integrated into her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, which was released in 1941. Although it would remain relatively unnoticed, her responsibilities at her full-time increased and in 1949 was promoted to Editor-in-Chief.

Rachel’s second work, which explored the geological aspects of and origin of the sea, won the John Burroughs Medal (today known as the National Book Award). Published as The Sea Around Us, it sold more than 200,000 copies in its first year. She was able to retire from her job with the Department of Fisheries to devote her time to writing, and it was at this point that she became more involved with the problems associated with the increased use of pesticides being distributed by the government and chemical companies.

Her most famous book, Silent Spring, creatively depicts a new kind of springtime – one without the songs of birds; one that was still. She put a descriptive spin on the mounting problem of pesticide usage, and challenged the government and agricultural scientists to improve upon and change existing practices and attitudes towards the environment. Even though she was threatened by several chemical firms and on the brink of lawsuits, she didn’t back down. She and her colleagues believed in her, and after the book was released and became a national best-seller, most of her critics had been silenced. She not only raised public awareness of an otherwise obscure environmental challenge, but she also started the modern environmental movement with her book. Without her contributions, pesticide usage would have gone unchallenged. She inspired generations of activists.

Lear, Linda. “Rachel Carson’s Biography.” 1998. www.rachelcarson.org.

Matthiessen, Peter. “Rachel Carson: Before there was an Environmental Movement,
there was One Brave Woman and her very Brave Book.” Time. Online

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