Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson is known as the mother of environmentalism, she was an acclaimed author, marine biologist and spent years inspiring the world to care for nature. She was born in 1907 and grew up in Pennsylvania. From a young age she held a passion for the natural world as she explored her family’s 64-acre property surrounded by forests and wetlands (Lear, 1998).

Throughout her career she faced gender-based discrimination from men towards her ability as a scientist as well as her credibility as a scientific author. Carson published five books in her lifetime and among those, her most notable release was in 1962, titled Silent Spring. This novel was Carson’s call for society to question its reckless domination of the natural world by illustrating the detrimental effects of chemical pesticide use. Upon the novel’s release, Carson effectively went to war with the male dominated American chemical industry. She faced extreme criticisms from the science community, many of which referred to and were based upon her gender.

Despite these hardships, she not only inspired generations of scientists, but she proved to the scientific world of the 1960’s that women scientists can also initiate calls for societal change. As a result of her many efforts and years of work Rachel Carson had successfully kickstarted the environmentalist movement, in 1970 the American Environmental Protection Agency was created (Environment Canada formed soon after in 1971) and in 1972 the pesticide DDT was a banned substance in the USA.