biosphere2:

Happy Birthday, Rachel Carson!

Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.

Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and she became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s.

Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially environmental problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides, and it inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter.

I very much enjoyed Linda Lear’s biography of Carson. One of my children asked me once for a school assignment who I would like to meet, if I could go back in time and meet anyone in history. I said I’d want to visit Southport Island, Maine, in the summer of 1963 to look at tide pools with Rachel Carson. I know she was pretty weak by then, but sharing a little of that time with her sounded very compelling.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/51511677134.

This entry was posted by jbc on Monday, May 27th, 2013 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Tumblr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.