Leah Quinn
Phone: x6834
Email: lcquin02@stlawu.edu
Advisor: Wil Rivers

Poster Presentation

Rachel Carson is a tremendous woman who persevered in the face of opposition, and who gained the public’s support by explaining her research on a level that everyone could understand.  While examining the controversial world of pesticide usage, Carson was opposed by just about every powerful institution in America at the time: the government, corporate America, the industry of agriculture, and the media. In the early 1960s, publications, TV stations, government agencies, and private companies came at Carson from every angle.  Criticizing her character, calling her “hysterical”, and scrutinizing over her research methods, these institutions were relentless. This attack on Rachel Carson seemed to stimulate the public’s interest in the controversy.  Carson was a very intelligent woman, who with a degree in English and a background in natural science, wrote her books so that common people would be able to understand her revolutionary research.  She broke down her experiments and results to a level where one who had little or no understanding of science could comprehend the detriment of substances like DDT. As the world adjusted to the fact that the pesticides being pushed as the agricultural cure-all, may in fact be poisoning our environment, they began to see Carson in a new light.  She became a pioneer of the environmental movement, a phrase that she seemed to introduce into everyday vernacular. Only after the public accepted Carson’s message, and began to question the arguments from her opposition, did the media, the government, and industrial America begin to curtail their outcry against Carson, and accept her as one of the great scientists in American history.