Carson, Rachel Louise, 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 some places flawed—study of the dangers of certain insecticides, is generally acknowledged as the impetus for the modern environmental movement.
See previously uncollected writings ed. by L. Lear (1998); biographies by J. Harlan (1989), L. Lear (1997), M. H. Lytle (2007), and W. Souder (2012).
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