writer, scientist, and ecologist
Rachel grew up in Springdale, Pennsylvania. Carson graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932.
She was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to write radio scripts during the Depression and supplemented her income writing feature articles on natural history for the Baltimore Sun. She began a fifteen-year career in the federal service as a scientist and editor in 1936.
She started out with writing natural resources and edited scientific articles. Under the Sea-Wind. In 1952 she published her prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955. These books constituted a biography of the ocean and made Carson famous as a naturalist and science writer for the public. She wrote several other articles designed to teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world, including "Help Your Child to Wonder," and "Our Ever-Changing Shore", and planned another book on the ecology of life.
Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long-term effects of misusing pesticides. In Silent Spring (1962) she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world.
Carson was in fact later then attacked by some industries and government alarmist. But courageously still spoke about what reminded us that we are still vulnerable parts of the natural world subject to the same damage as the rest of the entire ecosystem.
Bibliography:
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/rachel-carson
This is a super concise, yet thorough biography on Rachel Carson! Silent Spring truly changed how the environmentalist movement. When it was published, because she specifically demanded and believed that humans were responsible for poisoning the planet. What she faced opposition wise was near the level of Super PACs today. Every single major corporation hurting the environment was enraged at her book, yet over fifty years after it was published, it has influenced how we view the environment this day.
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Rachel Carson is a perfect example of a person ahead of their time. Both a scientist, a writer, and a woman, Carson had to deal with a whole lot of obstacles in order to make her voice be heard, and in order for people to take her seriously. As noted, her works were mostly published before the civil rights movement begun, before women truly begun protesting for equality in the work place and equal opportunity. Rachel is one of those rare examples of a woman succeeding in a male dominated field, especially when advocating for a controversial side. Being a female environmentalist, she had a lot of opponents. The environmentalist movement begun slightly earlier than the civil rights movements. It was a motion towards general awareness of nature and what humanity has done to it. She famously wrote the book "Silent Spring", which is considered to have kickstarted the environmentalist movement of the 1960's.
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