Rachel Carson: Author

To mark Earth Day which is celebrated this week, our Remarkable Woman of the Week is marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, born May 27, 1907. Called the “mother of the environmental movement,” her 1962 book, Silent Spring exposed the dangers of the pesticide DDT.

Rachel Carson’s love of nature was rooted in her childhood, growing up on her family’s 65-acre farm in Springdale, Pennsylvania. Surrounded by animals, orchards, and woods near the Allegheny River north of Pittsburgh, she spent more time outdoors than in. Carson was fascinated by the beauty and mysteries of the natural world. She never lost her sense of wonder, a phrase that would become the title of one of her books.

But, by 1962, when Silent Spring was published, her sense of wonder had matured, overshadowed by a darker discovery that pesticides, specifically DDT, were disrupting and destroying the entire life cycle of plants and animals, including humans. Her book challenged the chemical industry and its mostly male scientists who dismissed her as a hysterical, alarmist woman whose facts were flawed. Taking on an entire industry took deep courage, but she was vindicated when years later, DDT was banned by the government.

Carson was born on May 27, 1907, the third and youngest child of Maria and Robert Carson, who was an insurance salesman. She loved reading and writing, mostly about nature. She was a budding author, publishing her first stories at age 11 in a popular children’s publication of the time, St. Nicholas Magazine. At Pennsylvania College for Women (today called Chatham College), she seemed destined for a career in writing, but she switched her major and graduated in 1929 with a degree in biology. She went onto Johns Hopkins University where she graduated with a master’s degree in zoology in 1932, followed by a fellowship at the Woods Hole Marine Laboratory.

In 1935, Carson was hired as a writer for a weekly radio show called Romance Under the Waters. Despite its soap opera-ish title, it was an educational show about marine life produced by the United States Bureau of Fisheries (now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). The show’s success and her top score on the civil service exam led to a job offer at the agency the following year. She was hired as an aquatic biologist to write reports and brochures for the public. She also found time to write articles published in The Baltimore Sun. In 1936, she was the second woman to be hired full time at the agency.

Working at the Fisheries Bureau satisfied her love of science while providing a creative outlet for her writing talent. Her research contributed to a trilogy of books that made her famous. The first, Under the Sea Wind, published in 1941, was based on a brochure she had written for the Bureau and later turned into an essay for The Atlantic. Her next book, The Sea Around Us, published in 1951, was a hit with readers and critics. It won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction andwas on the New York Times Bestseller List for 86 weeks and translated into 28 languages. Hollywood came calling and Carson sold a movie producer the film rights. Although she was unhappy with its final script and film, the movie based on her book won the Oscar in 1953 for Best Documentary.

Now a celebrity, Carson was in demand for interviews and speaking engagements. More importantly, success allowed her to retire from her day job, move to Southport, Maine and focus on being a full-time writer. In 1955, she published The Edge of the Sea, the final book in the series. By the late 1950s, Carson was that rare best-selling author who could write about science in an accessible and poetic way. Her books reflected the joy and inspiration she found in nature. But there was little joy in her next book.

In the 1940s, DDT was developed and used to wipe out malaria, typhus and other insect borne diseases, saving the lives of thousands of GIs. It was hailed as “one of the greatest discoveries of World War II” and the scientist who created it won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Now in peacetime, it was used as an insecticide for boosting crop production. It was also used for large scale aerial spraying and was a component in other products, including wallpaper and insecticidal paint. By 1963, the United States was producing more than 81,000 tons of DDT a year.

Having followed the research on DDT for more than a decade, Carson was alarmed by more and more studies that showed how overuse of DDT led to harmful and sometimes deadly effects on wildlife, plant life and humans.

Silent Spring’s powerful opening chapter, “A Fable for Tomorrow” described a town where wildlife, animals, crops and pets had been “silenced” by the misuse of DDT. The examples Carson used were drawn from real life incidents. She called pesticides “the elixirs of death,” and devoted four chapters to cases of pesticide poisoning, cancer and other illnesses linked to DDT.

Apparently, scientists were aware of studies showing the health hazards of pesticides. but had not made them public. Carson was the first one to bring them to the public’s attention. She wrote, “if we are living so intimately with chemicals – eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones – we had better know something about their power.”

Carson did not call for a ban of DDT, but for more oversight over its use and for the development of biological alternatives. She accused the chemical industry of spreading misinformation and the government for failing to thoroughly investigate the side effects. The response to the book from the chemical industry was swift and brutal. Chemical companies personally attacked Carson as a “communist and a radical.” They said her claims and facts were “absurd,” and “gross distortions.” They questioned her sanity and integrity. One executive wrote that if the country were to follow Carson’s suggestions, “we would return to the Dark Ages where insects, diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.” One chemical company withdrew their commercials from a CBS Reports program that featured Carson and her book. That show attracted 15 million viewers.

But prominent scientists and politicians, including then President John Kennedy, supported Carson and came to the book’s defense. A year later, after two congressional hearings, a report from the Presidential Science Advisory Committee recommended further research into the health hazards of pesticides and recommended more caution, vindicating Carson’s claims.

Because of Silent Spring, pesticides became a major issue in the budding grassroots environmental movement that began in the late 1960s. It has been credited as one of the catalysts for the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. On December 31, 1972, the EPA banned DDT use in the United States. Suffering from breast cancer at the time, Carson died in April of that year and did not live to see the ban enacted.

Carson was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. Her childhood home in Pennsylvania is a national landmark and her former employer, the US Fish and Wildlife Service named a wildlife refuge in Maine in her honor.

©2023 Alice Look
Co-founder, Remarkable Women Project.org
Executive Producer, Remarkable Women Project