Carson, Rachel Louise (1907–1964)

US biologist, writer, and conservationist. Her book Silent Spring (1962), attacking the indiscriminate use of pesticides, inspired the creation of the modern environmental movement.

Carson was born in Springdale, Philadelphia, and educated at Pennsylvania College for Women and Johns Hopkins University. She worked first at the University of Maryland and the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, and then as an aquatic biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service 1936–49, becoming its editor-in-chief until 1952. Her first book, The Sea Around Us (1951), was a best-seller and won several literary awards. It was followed by The Edge of the Sea (1955), an ecological exploration of the seashore. Silent Spring was a powerful condemnation of the effects of pesticides, especially DDT. While writing about broad scientific issues of pollution and ecological exploitation, she also raised important issues about the reckless squandering of natural resources by an industrial world.