Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson grew up on a farm in Springdale, Pennsylvania, where she explored the woods and streams and decided early to be a writer. In college she switched from English to biology, and she earned a master's degree in zoology at Johns Hopkins. Short of money after her father's death, she supported her mother and later her orphaned nieces and nephew by working for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, later the Fish and Wildlife Service, writing radio scripts and pamphlets and becoming chief editor. Her book The Sea Around Us, published in 1951, became a bestseller and won the National Book Award, allowing her to write full time. In the late 1950s she studied the effects of synthetic pesticides such as DDT, which were sprayed widely. In Silent Spring, published in 1962, she argued that their careless use was killing birds, fish and other wildlife and could harm people. The chemical industry attacked the book, but a presidential science committee largely supported her findings, and in 1972 DDT was banned for most uses in the United States. She was ill with cancer while writing it and died in 1964.

Faith: Faith not well documented. Source: Wikipedia