The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson
|
|
| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman - Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering Environmental Engineering |
| Learning Resource Type: | Reference - Article/Document |
| Media Type: | WWW |
| Author(s): | RachelCarson.org, Linda Lear |
| Description: | Website with biographical and scientific resources associated with Rachel Carson's life and legacy. She is best known for her book - The Silent Spring. Excerpt: "Rachel Carson, writer, scientist, and ecologist, grew up simply in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. Her mother bequeathed to her a life-long love of nature and the living world that Rachel expressed first as a writer and later as a student of marine biology. Carson graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College) in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932. She was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to write radio scripts during the Depression and supplemented her income writing feature articles on natural history for the Baltimore Sun. She began a fifteen-year career in the federal service as a scientist and editor in 1936 and rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long term effects of misusing pesticides. In Silent Spring (1962) she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world. Carson was attacked by the chemical industry and some in government as an alarmist, but courageously spoke out to remind us that we are a vulnerable part of the natural world subject to the same damage as the rest of the ecosystem. Testifying before Congress in 1963, Carson called for new policies to protect human health and the environment. Rachel Carson died in 1964 after a long battle against breast cancer. Her witness for the beauty and integrity of life continues to inspire new generations to protect the living world and all its creatures." |
| Rating: |
  |
| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, pesticides |
| References |
Rachel Carson - Time's Most Important People of the Twentieth Century |
| Usage Tip | |
| Related ABET Criteria: |
(h) Understand global, economic, environmental, and societal context |
| Use of Resource: | Well documented reference website. |
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Interactivity Level: | Very Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | 2008 |
| Platform/Format: | WWW |
| Cost: | Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.rachelcarson.org/?v1=About |
| Copyright and Use Restrictions: | Fair use applies by recent rulings on thumbnails and other educational activities. "Anyone may copy and use the written information on this site so long as credit is given to the author (Linda Lear) and the website (www.rachelcarson.org). Photographs may NOT be reproduced for any use whatsoever from the site. Use of photographs is in violation of copyright. Professionals seeking permission to use a photograph for publications in TIFF or JPEG format should contact the curator of Special Collections (rachelcarson@conncoll.edu) Connecticut College 270 Mohegan Ave. New London, CT 06320 to discuss permission." |
| Metadata: | IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
|
