The youngest of three children, Rachel Carson had a rugged upbringing in a simple farmhouse outside the western Pennsylvania river town of Springdale. She credited her mother with introducing her to the world of nature that became her lifelong passion.
In 1925 she entered Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College) graduating with honors in 1929, and earning a scholarship to continue her studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. 1932, Rachel received her M.A. in Zoology from John Hopkins University.
After completing her education, Carson joined the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries as the writer of a radio show entitled "Romance Under the Waters," in which she was able to explore life under the seas and bring it to listeners. In 1936, after being the first woman to take and pass the civil service test, the Bureau of Fisheries hired her as a full-time junior biologist, and over the next 15 years, she rose in the ranks until she was the chief editor of all publications for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
During the 1940s, Carson began to write books on her observations of life under the sea, a world as yet unknown to the majority of people. She resigned from her government position in 1952 in order to devote all her time to writing. The idea for her most famous book, 'Silent Spring', emerged, and she began writing it in 1957. It was published in 1962, and influenced President Kennedy, who had read it, to call for testing of the chemicals mentioned in the book.
Vice President Al Gore credits Carson's work with prompting the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency though he points out that, for political reasons, the Agency has failed to live up to its promise. But, as he has also said, 'Silent Spring' helped him and millions of others to develop an environmental consciousness and that was no small accomplishment. Only Aldo Leopold did as much, perhaps, to give scientific respectibility to the environmental movement. Among other noteworthy elements of the book, it introduced the term ecosystem to the general public.
Ironically and sadly, while this controversy was swirling around the book, the author was dying of cancer -- a cancer that may have been caused by exposure to environmental carcinogens such as those she studied. She died in 1964. One measure of her influence may be seen in the fact that chemical industry sources are still passionately trying to convince people that she was wrong, that "man" can "control" nature through chemistry.
Carson has been called the mother of the modern environmental movement.
