RACHEL CARSON CENTENNIAL MAY 27

By Ella Tyler

May 27, 2007 marks the 100 anniversary of the birth of Rachel Carson. Her work, combining serious biological research and lyrical writing, revolutionized America’s interest in environmental issues, before the word “environmental” was in popular use. Her book, “The Sea Around Us”, was published in 1951 and remained on the New York Times’ best-seller list for 81 weeks. “Silent Spring,” published in 1962, launched the contemporary environmental movement and led directly to the banning of the pesticide DDT.

Cockrell Butterfly Center will celebrate Carson’s life with a program called “A Sense of Wonder” on Sunday, May 27, from 11 – 3 pm. The event will include a tribute to Carson, Bugs on Wheels, a henna artist, and displays from area environmental groups including Texans for Alternatives to Pesticides, Galveston Baykeeper, and Citizens Environmental Coalition. “Silent Spring” and several other books will be sold. Admission to the event (only) is free.

Carson was born in a rural Pennsylvania community near the Allegheny River. In “Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature” biographer Linda Lear reports that Carson’s mother was very interested in nature and encouraged Carson to explore the area’s forests and streams.

Carson was first published when she was 10, in the St. Nicholas literary magazine for children. In Time Magazine’s “Most Influential People of the Century” issue, Peter Matthiessen writes, “She was always a writer, and she always knew that. A reader and loner and devotee of birds, and indeed all nature, the slim, shy girl of plain face and dark curly hair continued writing throughout adolescence, chose an English major at Pennsylvania College for Women and continued to submit poetry to periodicals. Not until junior year, when a biology course reawakened the “sense of wonder” with which she had always encountered the natural world, did she switch her major to zoology, not yet aware that her literary and scientific passions might be complementary.”

Carson won a scholarship for graduate work in biology at Johns Hopkins University, an enormous accomplishment for a woman in 1929. She taught zoology at the University of Maryland and studied at the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, Mass during the summer. A part-time job writing science radio scripts for the old Bureau of Fisheries, (now Fish and Wildlife service) let to a full-time appointment as a junior aquatic biologist. In her field work, Carson witnessed the damage caused by pesticides. In addition to her field work, also wrote extensively. Her series “Conservation In Action” combines biology, history, natural history, and geology with an ease and grace that made me want to read more just for pleasure.

Carson’s first book, “Under the Sea-Wind” was published in 1941. The book demonstrated her unique ability to present complex scientific information in a way that everyone, not just scientists, could understand – and enjoy.

After the success of “The Sea Around Us”, her second book, Carson resigned from the Fish and Wildlife Service to write full time. Her third book, “Edge of the Sea” was published in 1956.

After that work was published, Carson went to work on “Silent Spring”, a much darker work. Carson had hoped someone else write an expose on DDT, but eventually realized that no on else had the scientific background and the economic freedom to do it. As she expected, “Silent Spring” provoked a firestorm of controversy as well as attacks on Carson’s professional integrity. The federal government, however, ordered a complete review of pesticide policy, which resulted in the banning of DDT. Carson died from breast cancer in 1964 at the age of 57.

For more about Carson go online.