Rachel Carson

(1907 - 1964)

Rachel Carson was serving as the editor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s publications when she completed her second work of nonfiction, The Sea Around Us, the success of which allowed her to retire from her day job and construct a cottage in Maine. In 1962 she published Silent Spring, her exposé of the dangers of pesticide use, which prompted President John F. Kennedy to ask his science advisory committee to investigate her claims. Two years after the book appeared, Carson died of cancer at the age of fifty-six.