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Rachel Carson was born May 27, 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania. Rachel began writing when she was an adolescent. Her first articles were published in the St. Nicolas literary magazine for children. Ever since she was a child, she was interested in nature and was a devotee of birds.
When she entered Pennsylvania College for Women, she was an English major. In her junior year, after taking a biology course, she changed her major to zoology. Rachel graduated from Pennsylvania College, magna cum laude, in 1929. In 1936, she received a master's degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins. While continuing to study during the summers at the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, she taught zoology at the University of Maryland. It was at this time that she became fascinated by the sea. In 1935, she worked part-time writing science radio scripts for the Fish and Wildlife Service. This job later became a full-time appointment as a junior acquatic biologist. Her feature articles, which were primarily about marine zoology, were published in the "Baltimore Sun."
In September 1937, Carson's article, "The Undersea," was published. This article became the starting point for her first book, Under the Sea-Wind. In 1949, she became chief editor of publications at the Fish and Wildlife Service. Ten years after her first book was published, Carson circulated a second work that explored the origins and geological aspects of the sea. Her manuscript was rejected by 15 magazines. Eventually, Edith Oliver of the "New Yorker" magazine, recommended that it be published. It was serialized as "A Profile of the Sea," and published as a book in July 1951, entitled, The Sea Around Us. The book won the John Burroughs Medal and the National Book Award. In the first year, it sold more than 200,000 copies.
After publishing her second book, Carson retired from the Fish and Wildlife Service in order to write full time. Carson and her colleague, Clarence Cottam, had become concerned by government abuse of new chemical pesticides such as DDT and the "predator" and "pest" control programs which were distributing poisons without regard for the welfare of animals. "The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became. I realized that here was the material for a book. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important," Carson stated.
In 1962, she described the dangers of harmful chemicals in her best-selling book, Silent Spring. This book raised the awareness of the need to protect the environment. The message in her book was a warning about the dangers of destroying the environment. The following excerpt from the book is the metaphor Carson used to make her point:
"There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. There was a strange stillness. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of scores of bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh."
As a result of her book, which has been translated into over 40 languages, new environmental laws were passed and people all over the world became involved in activities to protect the environment. Today, the book is still recognized as the cornerstone of the new environmentalism. In 1962, in a letter to her friend, Carson wrote:
"The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind--that, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done. I have felt bound by a solemn obligation to do what I could--if I didn't at least try I could never be happy again in nature. But now I can believe that I have at least helped a little. It would be unrealistic to believe one book could bring a complete change."
On April 14, 1964, Rachel Carson died in Silver Spring, Maryland of cancer at the age of 56. In commemoration of her achievements as a writer, biologist and environmentalist, the U.S. Department of the Interior erected a plaque in her honor at the Carson Wildlife Refuge in Maine. Inscribed on the plaque are the words of Ms. Carson:
"All the life of the planet is interrelated. Each species has its own ties to others. And all are related to the earth. This is the theme of The Sea Around Us, and the other sea books, and it is also the message of Silent Spring."
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