Biografia

University Of Puerto Rico at Humacao

Rachel Carson
Home Work #2

English 3101-005
Rachel Carson

Biography

Rachel Louise Carson was born in May 27, 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania and die in April 14, 1964 in Silver Spring, Maryland. Was an American marine biologist and nature writer whose writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.
Carson started hercareer as a biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. She widely praised 1951 bestseller ‘The Sea Around Us’ won her financial security and recognition as a gifted writer. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the republished version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. Together, her sea trilogy explores the whole of oceanlife, from the shores to the surface to the deep sea.
In the late 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation and the environmental problems caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was ‘’Silent Spring” (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented portion of the American public. ‘Silent Spring’ spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy andthe grassroots environmental movement the book inspired led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter.
She was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to write radio scripts during the Depression and supplemented her income writing feature articles on natural history for the Baltimore Sun. She began a fifteen-year career inthe federal service as a scientist and editor in 1936 and rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
She wrote pamphlets on conservation and natural resources and edited scientific articles, but in her free time turned her government research into lyric prose, first as an article "Undersea" (1937, for the Atlantic Monthly), and then in a book, Underthe Sea-Wind (1941). In 1952 she published her prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955. These books constituted a biography of the ocean and made Carson famous as a naturalist and science writer for the public. Carson resigned from government service in 1952 to devote herself to her writing.
She wrote several other articles designedto teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world, including "Help Your Child to Wonder," (1956) and "Our Ever-Changing Shore" (1957), and planned another book on the ecology of life. Embedded within all of Carson's writing was the view that human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly.
Disturbed by theprofligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long term effects of misusing pesticides. In ‘’Silent Spring’’ (1962) she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world.
Carson was attacked by the chemical industryand some in government as an alarmist, but courageously spoke out to remind us that we are a vulnerable part of the natural world subject to the same damage as the rest of the ecosystem. Testifying before Congress in 1963, Carson called for new policies to protect human health and the environment. Rachel Carson died in 1964 after a long battle against breast cancer. Her witness for the beauty andintegrity of life continues to inspire new generations to protect the living world and all its creatures.

Life & Work

Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907 on a small family farm near Springdale, Pennsylvania, just up the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh. Carson was an avid reader, and, from a remarkably young age, a talented writer. She also spent a lot of time exploring around her...