Google doodle today commemorates the 107th birth anniversary of Rachel Louise Carson, eminent scientist and author of Silent Spring, the book that launched a truly global environmental movement and led to the banning of pesticide DDT. Born on 27 May 1907, in Springdale, Pennsylvania, Carson was a nature lover, a keen reader and had developed a penchant for writing from an early age, documenting the living world around her. She read zoology at Johns Hopkins University, completing her MA in 1932 and later joined US fish service as a marine biologist.
Besides her scientific work, she wrote pamphlets, articles and features on nature and conservation and in 1936 became editor-in-chief of all publications of USFWS, according to a biography by Linda Lear.
But Carson's most acclaimed work came in 1962 with the publication of Silent Spring, a book about the unnatural quiet of countryside brought on by deaths of birds due to spraying of fields and farms with pesticides, chief among them DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane).in the book, Carson catalogued the environmental impacts of indiscriminate DDT spraying in the US and challenged the logic of releasing large amounts of chemicals into the environment without proper understanding of their effects on ecology or human health.
Despite being targeted by the chemical industry, Carson continued to speak out against the use of pesticides in agriculture. In 1963 she testified before the Congress and also provided her input in the development of US federal policies on environment and agriculture.
Silent Spring showed that DDT and other pesticides caused cancer, killed wildlife, especially birds, and had a devastating impact on both nature and humankind. The book resulted in a nation-wide public outcry in the US, leading eventually to a ban on using DDT in agriculture in 1972.
A global ban followed later same year under the Stockholm Convention – a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from use of chemicals.
Carson's work in awakening the world to the horrors of pesticides is cited by scientists as a major factor in bringing back some bird species from the brink of extinction, particularly, the bald eagle – US's national bird. Peregrine falcon is another bird of prey that has made a comeback largely due to the ban on DDT.
Her other books include The Sea Around Us (1952) and The Edge of the Sea (1955). Carson died of breast cancer in 1964, but remains one of the most eminent writer and scientist to have inspired a global environmental movement that questioned man's relation with nature. And in no small way, her work helped save millions of birds, giving spring back its song.
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