Why Rachel Carson is considered the cornerstone of new environmentalism?

      Rachel Carson grew up on a small Pennsylvania farm, where she spent hours exploring the outdoors. She always loved books, and when she was young, thought she would be a writer. She went to the Pennsylvania College for Women. A required course in biology made her change assumptions about her career: she majored in zoology, and then went to Johns Hopkins for a master’s degree in genetics.

     While working as a scientist-bureaucrat for the government, Carson continued writing. In 1941, she published ‘Under the Sea-Wind’, her first book. She was a quiet, private person, fascinated with the workings of nature from a scientific and aesthetic point of view. Carson went on to write ‘The Sea Around Us’ and ‘The Edge of the Sea’, and finally, ‘Silent Spring’ in 1962. In the wake of Silent Spring, which described the dangers of pesticides such as DDT, she was attacked personally, and as a scientist by many. ‘Silent Spring’ became a runaway best seller, with international reverberations. Even today, it is still regarded as the cornerstone of new environmentalism.