Rachel Carson was born in Springdale, Pennsylvania. She studied English at Pennsylvania College for Women (later Chatham College), then studied science at Johns Hopkins University, where she earned her master’s degree in 1932. She taught at the University of Maryland from 1931 to 1936. She then worked for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries as a marine biologist, a position she held until 1952. Carson published several influential books on marine ecology, including Under the Sea Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951), and Edge of the Sea (1955). Her most influential book was Silent Spring, published in 1962. This book drew attention to the environmental damage caused by agricultural pesticides and made Carson a pioneer of the 1960s environmental movement. Even before the last chapters of Silent Spring were completed, Carson’s health began to decline, and she died in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1964.
