Rachel Carson

Carson, Rachel Louise

Rachel Louise Carson, 1907–64, American writer and marine biologist, b. Springdale, Pa., M.A. Johns Hopkins, 1932. Her well-known books on sea life—Under the Sea Wind (1941), The Sea around Us (1951), and The Edge of the Sea (1954)—combine keen scientific observation with rich poetic description. Her Silent Spring ...

Carson, Rachel Louise

Rachel Louise Carson, 1907–64, American writer and marine biologist, b. Springdale, Pa., M.A. Johns Hopkins, 1932. Her well-known books on sea life—Under the Sea Wind (1941), The Sea around Us (1951), and The Edge of the Sea (1954)—combine keen scientific observation with rich poetic description. Her Silent Spring (1962), a provocative—and in many places flawed—study of the dangers of certain insecticides, is generally acknowledged as the impetus for the modern environmental movement.

See biographies by J. Harlan (1989), L. Lear (1997), M. H. Lytle (2007), and W. Souder (2012).