In the years following her death, Carson was sometimes criticized for helping to foster hysteria about the use of pesticides like DDT. She never wanted a blanket ban on chemicals. When no one offered, Carson took it on herself. Carson tried to get other writers, including E.B. Later, when Carson became a science writer, she felt the urge to warn people about studies indicating DDT could be harmful-but she knew that whoever did so would be making enemies of powerful people. Her farm was near a glue factory that slaughtered horses, and the smell often compelled neighbors to abandon their porches and run indoors. She was reluctant to take on the chemical industry.įrom an early age, Carson had been cognizant of the environmental effects of toxic chemicals. As you, with your great gifts, always do, you have adorned the hours with love and tenderness, and with fun and laughter, too.” 7. It has been a precious oasis in time, darling, to be cherished and returned to in memory always. “No visit could ever be long enough, but it has been wonderful to have the sense of leisure created by four days and nights unbroken by diversions. In a letter following a get-together in 1964, Carson wrote: Over the next decade, Carson and Freeman developed a loving relationship, apparent in 750 letters edited and published by Freeman’s granddaughter in 1995. There, she met her neighbor, Dorothy Freeman, and found they shared a deep interest in the natural world. The book’s success allowed Carson to move to the Maine coast to focus on writing. The book, about the natural history of the oceans, was serialized in The New Yorker and stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for 31 weeks, eventually winning the National Book Award. Years before Silent Spring, Carson’s 1951 book The Sea Around Us put her on the literary map. Some science writers scoffed, but those creative flourishes helped Carson deliver her work to a broader audience. In Under the Sea-Wind, her 1941 book on marine life, Carson wrote about fish feeling fear and other animals wearing expressions. Rachel Carson made science accessible to a general audience.Ĭarson was revered as a science writer because she turned the sterile, dull copy common in environmental research into something of interest to a wider readership. To reduce that chance, she published pieces under the byline “R.L. Science then was a male-oriented endeavor. While freelancing for publications like The Baltimore Sun, Carson feared that readers would dismiss her pro-environment message if they knew the writer was a woman. In 1952, having become the editor-in-chief for all of the bureau’s publications, she left the agency to write full-time. Part of her duties involved writing seven-minute radio scripts for a segment called “Romance Under the Waters.” The following year, she was promoted to junior aquatic biologist, one of only two women of such stature at the bureau. She continued to write articles for both government and mainstream publications that presented elegant arguments on the need to preserve our natural world, including the oceans. In 1935, Carson’s aptitude for communicating science earned her a job with the U.S. Rachel Carson used the radio to advocate for the world's oceans. in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932. She switched her major to biology-one of only three women at the school to join that department-and later earned her M.A. At the time she began attending, Carson had her sights set on earning an English degree and becoming a teacher and writer. She originally wanted to major in English.Ĭarson pursued formal education with zeal, winning a scholarship to the Pennsylvania College for Women. Her story was accepted and published in 1918. Nicholas magazine, a publication geared to young writers that had also published pieces from William Faulkner and F. She also loved writing: At age 10, Carson wrote a story about a downed fighter pilot, “ A Battle in the Clouds,” and submitted it to St. Her family lived on 65 acres of farmland roughly 14 miles outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rachel Carson published her first story at age 10.Ĭarson’s love of nature was no doubt due to early exposure. Take a look at a few facts about Carson’s inspiring life. Her book Silent Spring detailed how chemicals like DDT could have unintended consequences both the work and the public’s reaction to it helped usher in the modern environmental movement. Although she spent most of her career as a marine biologist, Rachel Carson (1907–1964) is remembered mostly for raising the alarm over the dangers of pollution and pesticides.
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