Rachel Carson

American marine biologist employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 16 years. Carson kept her job with the USFWS largely to support her widowed mother, sickly niece and the niece's son, whom she adopted after the death of the niece. Around the same time, she wrote "The Sea Around Us," 1951, and "Silent Spring," 1962, as well as two other popular books about ocean life. She was always able to combine the two loves of her life, nature and writing, despite consistent efforts to dismiss her as a frustrated spinster. In addition, Carson, through her writing, made science accessible, beautiful and exciting to the common person. In 1945, she first began to warn the public about the dangers to waterfowl of DDT, and that introducing DDT into the North American ecosystem could "upset the whole delicate balance of nature." Eerily, many of Carson's prophecies about the dangers of pesticides have come true. An educator too, she taught in various colleges. Carson died of a heart attack on 14 April 1964 in her home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Link to Wikipedia biography