Chatham College

Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global... environmental movement. Carson began her career as a biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award, recognition as a gifted writer, and financial security. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. That so-called sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the surface to the depths. Late in the 1950s Carson turned her attention to environmental problems she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring , which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. It spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides, and it inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
more