A Pittsburgh bridge was also renamed in Carson's honor as the Rachel Carson Bridge. Near Pittsburgh, a 35.7 miles (57 km) hiking trail, maintained by the Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy, was dedicated to Carson in 1975. Her home in Colesville, Maryland where she wrote Silent Spring was named a National Historic Landmark in 1991. A 17¢ Great Americans series postage stamp was issued in her honor the following year several other countries have since issued Carson postage as well.Ĭarson's birthplace and childhood home in Springdale, Pennsylvania - now known as the Rachel Carson Homestead-became a National Register of Historic Places site, and the nonprofit Rachel Carson Homestead Association was created in 1975 to manage it.

Perhaps most significantly, on June 9, 1980, Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.Ī variety of groups ranging from government institutions to environmental and conservation organizations to scholarly societies have celebrated Carson's life and work since her death. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides, and it inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially environmental problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides.

This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. National Book Award, recognition as a gifted writer, and financial security. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Rachel Louise Carson (– April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.Ĭarson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S.

Silent spring pesticides