Rachel Louise Carson

Born Springdale, Pennsylvania

As a government scientist, Rachel Carson became concerned about the ecological impact of pesticides, especially DDT, and in 1962 she published the groundbreaking Silent Spring. Finely written and passionately reasoned, Silent Spring exploded into national consciousness and can be said to have started the modern environmental movement. Although some of its conclusions are still controversial today, the book was a warning that an active citizenry had to be skeptical of large institutions, an attitude that became a dominant theme of the 1960s and 1970s. Sculptor Una Hanbury, who met Carson shortly before her death, was struck by her tremendous vitality and incorporated that quality into her portrait.