Rachel Carson
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 Carson's Government Photo (1940s) |
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| Born: | 1907-05-27 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States |
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| Died: | 1964-04-14 |
| Occupation(s): | zoologist, marine biologist |
| Nationality: | American |
| Writing period: | 1937-1964 |
| Subject(s): | ecology, pollution, pesticides |
| Influenced: | Natalie Angier, Sandra Steingraber, Marla Cone |
Rachel Louise Carson (27 May 1907 – 14 April 1964) was a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-born zoologist and marine biologist whose landmark book, Silent Spring, is often credited with having launched the global environmental movement. Silent Spring had an immense effect in the United States, where it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy.
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe around us, the less taste we shall have for destruction. – Rachel Carson
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[edit] Early life and education
Rachel Carson was born in 1907 on a small family farm near Springdale. As a child, she spent many hours learning about ponds, fields, and forests from her mother. She originally went to school to study English and creative writing, but switched her major to marine biology. Her talent for writing would help her in her new field, as she resolved to "make animals in the woods or waters, where they live, as alive to others as they are to me". She graduated from the Pennsylvania College for Women, today known as Chatham College, in 1929 with magna cum laude honors. Despite financial difficulties, she continued her studies in zoology and genetics at Johns Hopkins University, earning a master's degree in zoology in 1932.
Carson taught zoology at Johns Hopkins and at the University of Maryland for several years. She continued to study towards her doctoral degree, particularly at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Her financial situation, never satisfactory, became worse in 1932 when her father died, leaving Carson to care for her aging mother; this burden made continued doctoral studies impossible. She submitted a masters thesis instead, entitled "The Development of the Pronephros During the Embryonic and Early Larval Life of the Catfish (Ictalurus puncatatus)". She then accepted a part-time position at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries as a science writer working on radio scripts. In the process, she had to overcome resistance to the then-radical idea of having a woman sit for the Civil Service exam. In spite of the odds, she outscored all other applicants on the exam and in 1936 became only the second woman to be hired by the Bureau of Fisheries for a full-time, professional position, as a junior aquatic biologist.
[edit] Early career and publications
At the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, Carson worked on everything from cookbooks to scientific journals and became known for her ruthless insistence on high standards of writing. Early in her career, the head of the Bureau's Division of Scientific Inquiry, who had been instrumental in finding a position for her in the first place, rejected one of Carson's radio scripts because it was "too literary". He suggested that she submit it to the Atlantic Monthly. To Carson's astonishment and delight, it was accepted, and published as "Undersea" in 1937. (Other sources have it that it was the editor of The Baltimore Sun who made the Atlantic Monthly suggestion—Carson had been supplementing her meager income by writing short articles for that paper for some time.)
Carson's family responsibilities further increased that year when her older sister died at the age of 40, and she had to take on responsibility for her two nieces.
Publishing house Simon & Schuster, impressed by "Undersea", contacted Carson and suggested that she expand it into book form. Several years of working in the evenings resulted in Under the Sea-Wind (1941) which received excellent reviews but was a commercial flop. It had the misfortune to be released just a month before the Pearl Harbor raid catapulted America into World War II.
Carson rose within the Bureau (by then transformed into the Fish and Wildlife Service), becoming chief editor of publications in 1949. For some time she had been working on material for a second book: it was rejected by fifteen different magazines before The Katie serialized parts of it as A Profile of the Sea in 1951. Other parts soon appeared in Nature, and Oxford University Press published it in book form as The Sea Around Us. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 86 weeks, was abridged by Reader's Digest, won the 1952 National Book Award, and resulted in Carson being awarded two honorary doctorates. It was also made into a documentary film that was 61 minutes long and won an Oscar.
With success came financial security, and Carson was able to give up her job in 1952 to concentrate on writing full time. She completed the third volume of her sea trilogy, The Edge of the Sea, in 1955. Through 1956 and 1957, Carson worked on a number of projects and wrote articles for popular magazines.
Family tragedy struck a third time when one of the nieces she had cared for in the 1940s died at the age of 36, leaving a five-year-old orphan son. Carson took on that responsibility alongside the continuing one of caring for her mother, who was almost 90 by this time. She adopted the boy and, needing a suitable place to raise him, bought a rural property in Maryland. This environment was to be a major factor in the choice of her next topic.
[edit] Silent Spring and the DDT ban
- See also: Timeline of environmental events
Starting in the mid-1940s, Carson became concerned about the use of newly invented pesticides, especially DDT. "The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became," she wrote later, explaining her decision to start researching what would eventually become her most famous work, Silent Spring. "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."
Silent Spring focused on the environment, and pesticides in particular. It was known as Carson's crusade, and she worked on this book till death. Carson explored the subject of environmental connectedness: although a pesticide is aimed at eliminating one organism, its effects are felt throughout the food chain, and what was intended to poison an insect ends up poisoning larger animals and humans.
The four-year task of writing Silent Spring began with a letter from a close friend of Carson's. It was from a New Englander, Olga Owens Huckins, who owned a bird sanctuary. According to the letter, the sanctuary had been sprayed unmercifully by the government. The letter asked Carson to immediately use her influence with government authorities to begin an investigation into pesticide use. Carson decided it would be more effective to raise the issue in a popular magazine; however, publishers were uninterested, and eventually the project became a book instead.
Now, as a renowned author, she was able to ask for (and receive) the aid of prominent biologists, chemists, pathologists, and entomologists. She used Silent Spring to create a mental association in the public's mind between wildlife mortality and over-use of pesticides like dieldrin, toxaphene, and heptachlor. Her cautions regarding the previously little-remarked practices of introducing an enormous variety of industrial products and wastes into wilderness, waterways, and human habitats with little concern for possible toxicity struck the general public as common sense, as much as good science; "We are subjecting whole populations to exposure to chemicals which animal experiments have proved to be extremely poisonous and in many cases cumulative in their effects. These exposures now begin at or before birth and - unless we change our methods - will continue through the lifetime of those now living."
Even before Silent Spring was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, there was strong opposition to it. As Time Magazine recounted in 1999:
Carson was violently assailed by threats of lawsuits and derision, including suggestions that this meticulous scientist was a "hysterical woman" unqualified to write such a book. A huge counterattack was organized and led by Monsanto, Velsicol, American Cyanamid - indeed, the whole chemical industry - duly supported by the Agriculture Department as well as the more cautious in the media.
Scientists such as Robert White-Stevens (who wrote "If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth." (see [1]), and chemical companies and other critics, attacked the data and interpretation in the book, and some went further to attack Carson's scientific credentials because her speciality was in marine biology and zoology, not in the field of biochemistry. Some went as far as characterizing her as a mere birdwatcher with more spare time than scientific background, calling her unprofessional, and a fringe of her critics accused her of being a communist.
In addition, many critics repeatedly asserted that she was calling for the elimination of all pesticides; despite the fact that Carson had made it clear she was not advocating the banning or complete withdrawal of helpful pesticides, but was instead encouraging responsible and carefully managed use with an awareness of the chemicals' impact on the entire ecosystem. In fact, she concludes her section on DDT in Silent Spring not by urging a total ban, but with Practical advice should be "Spray as little as you possibly can" rather than "Spray to the limit of your capacity." [1]
Houghton Mifflin was pressured to suppress the book, but did not succumb. Silent Spring was positively reviewed by many outside of the agricultural and chemical science fields, and it became a runaway best seller both in the USA and overseas. Again, Time Magazine claim that, within a year or so of publication, "all but the most self-serving of Carson's attackers were backing rapidly toward safer ground. In their ugly campaign to reduce a brave scientist's protest to a matter of public relations, the chemical interests had only increased public awareness.” [2]
However, her claims on DDT still remain controversial, because no causal link between DDT and cancer in humans has been proved.
Pesticide use became a major public issue, helped by Carson's April 1963 appearance on a CBS TV special in debate with a chemical company spokesman. Later that year she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received many other honors and awards, including the Audubon Medal and the Cullen Medal of the American Geographical Society.
Carson received hundreds of speaking invitations, but was unable to accept the great majority of them. Her health had been steadily declining since she had been diagnosed with breast cancer halfway through the writing of Silent Spring. In one of her last public appearances, Carson testified before President Kennedy's Science Advisory Committee, which issued a report on May 15 1963 largely backing Carson's scientific claims(http://www.nwhp.org/tlp/biographies/carson/carson-bio.html). However, she never did live to see the banning of DDT in U.S.. She died on 14 April 1964, at the age of 56. In 1980, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the USA.
[edit] Carson's legacy
Silent Spring remains a founding text for the contemporary environmental movement in the West and is seen as an important work to this day.
The Rachel Carson State Office Building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is home to the Commonwealth's Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
On 22 April 2006, to celebrate Earth Day, the Ninth Street Bridge in Pittsburgh was formally renamed Rachel Carson Bridge [3]; see also Rachel Carson Homestead.
Between 1964 and 1990, 650 acres (260 hectares) near Brookeville in Montgomery County, Maryland were acquired and set aside as the Rachel Carson Conservation Park. The Hawlings River runs through this undeveloped park and there are both hiker and equestrian trails through both meadow and woodland. It is administered by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission.
There is also a public elementary school named after her in San Jose, California, and a middle school named after her in Herndon, Virginia.
The Rachel Carson Prize was founded in Stavanger, Norway in 1991, and is awarded to women who have made a contribution in the field of environmental protection.
A Sense of Wonder, a one-woman play based on the life and works of Rachel Carson -- written and performed by stage and screen actress Kaiulani Lee -- has toured the U.S., Canada, England and Italy since 1995. The two-act play takes place in Carson's Maine summer home (act one) and in her Silver Springs, Maryland home (act two) after the release of her book Silent Spring. The play has been performed at regional and national conferences, more than one hundred universities, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., the Albert Sweitzer Conference at the United Nations, the Sierra Club Centennial in San Francisco, and the Department of the Interior 150th Anniversary Celebration.
[edit] Books
- Under the Sea Wind, 1941, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group, 1996, ISBN 0-14-025380-7
- The Sea Around Us, 1951, Oxford University Press, 1991, ISBN 0-19-506997-8
- The Edge of the Sea, 1955, Mariner Books, 1998, ISBN 0-395-92496-0
- Silent Spring, Houghton Mifflin, 1962, Mariner Books, 2002, ISBN 0-618-24906-0
- Silent Spring initially appeared serialized in three parts in the 16 June, 23 June, and 30 June 1962 issues of The New Yorker magazine
- The Sense of Wonder, 1965, HarperCollins, 1998: ISBN 0-06-757520-X published posthumously
- Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, Beacon Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8070-8547-2
[edit] References
- Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, Linda Lear, Henry Holt, New York, 1997, Owl Books paperback 1998: ISBN 0-8050-3428-5
- Rachel Carson: A Biography, by Arlene Quaratiello. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. ISBN 0-313-32388-7
[edit] External links
- The Rachel Carson Homestead
- Silent Spring Institute
- RachelCarson.org
- Time magazine's "100 most important people" article on Carson
- New York Times obituary
- Big Picture TV video of chemist Michael Braungart discussing Rachel Carson's legacy
- Bridge to be named for Rachel Carson
- The Mosquito Killer by Malcolm Gladwell
- Silent Spring at 40: Rachel Carson’s classic is not aging well Reason Online, 12 June 2002
- Biography resources dedicated to Rachel Carson
- Kaiulani Lee's Sense of Wonder site
Categories: 1907 births | 1964 deaths | Alumnae of women's colleges | American biologists | American environmentalists | American marine biologists | American naturalists | Breast cancer patients | Breast cancer deaths | Green thinkers | People from Maryland | People from Pittsburgh | Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients | John Burroughs Medal recipients | University of Maryland, College Park faculty | Women writers
