February is LGBTQ+ History Month. This is a time to celebrate the lives of LGBTQ+ people and their experiences in the wider community. It is also a time of contemplation and an opportunity to raise awareness of the LGBTQ+ community’s history.

It is important to remember that queer people have always existed, but not always openly and that we have a duty to tell their stories. For me, this is particularly true for scientists and naturalists who were part of this community. As such, I wanted to share the story of one of the people who has inspired me the most, and one a surprising number of British environmentalists haven’t heard of.

Who is Rachel Carson?

Rachel Carson is arguably one of the most influential women in the environmental movement, her work led to nationwide bans of Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and other pesticides in the US, ignited a global environmental consciousness and inspired countless grassroots environmental movements. She was also a queer woman. Dorothy Freeman and Rachel Carson exchanged over 900 letters throughout their 12-year friendship, sharing their love of nature as well as a deep bond with each other. She was a campaigner, an author, a scientist - and she was fearless.

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction”*

How did her career begin?

She began her career working for the US Bureau of Fisheries after obtaining a master’s degree in zoology from John Hopkins University. She had wanted to stay and complete a doctorate in marine biology, but the economic pressures of the Great Depression and the sudden loss of her father left her with financial responsibility for her family. During her time at the Bureau, Carson published her first major book – ‘Under the Sea Wind’ – a vivid, nonhuman perspective of an underwater world. Her second book ‘The Sea Around Us’ was an even greater success and resulted in her being awarded not one, but two honorary doctorates.

During this period, Carson also became increasingly aware of the ecological impacts of DDT, a newly developed pesticide claimed to be the “insect bomb” which was being rolled out across the US. It is quite hard to envisage the scale of how much DDT was used in America during this period – they sprayed it on fields from planes, they sprayed it on gardens from trucks in the street, they sprayed on children. Carson witnessed time and time again the indiscriminate environmental destruction and suffering of birds and other wildlife poisoned by DDT. She gathered a dossier of evidence after investigating hundreds of incidents, including ones related to human health.

"Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself"*

Unfortunately, we can’t tell the story of Rachel Carson without mentioning the barriers she faced simply by being a woman. The saddest part of her story, to me, is not the untold environmental destruction caused by DDT that Carson fought against, but that it was not until after her death that she was truly recognised as the remarkable and incredibly intelligent scientist she had always been. The erasure of women in science is not a phenomenon exclusive to Rachel Carson, but I imagine few experienced such disdain and dismissal when speaking of such immediate threats to the natural world and to human life. She was publicly labelled as an amateur, a communist and a hysterical spinster by the press but also by male scientists and government officials.

“Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent"*

The publication of ‘Silent Spring’

Carson took the power back from her detractors and the emotion they ridiculed her for was at the very heart of her most influential work ‘Silent Spring’. Named one of the 25 greatest science books of all time, ‘Silent Spring’ almost single-handedly changed the American public’s mindset around pesticides. Carson’s combination of scientific knowledge and poetic writing evoked the wonder of the natural world and the tragedy felt through its loss, and this spoke to the imagination and conscious of the general public. As author Maria Popova expresses it "Her lyrical writing rendered her not a mere translator of the natural world, but an alchemist transmuting the steel of science into the gold of wonder".

Rachel Carson Honours

Rachel Carson passed away from breast cancer in 1964, before DDT was eventually banned in 1972, 10 years after the publication of ‘Silent Spring’. Posthumously she has been lauded with many honours including a Presidential Medal of Freedom. The list ranges from copious institutes and a nature reserve named after her to collectable postage stamps, a Google Doodle and a U2 tour video.

If this is your first time of hearing about her, or you fancy a good read, I would recommend picking up ‘Silent Spring’ which rings as true today as it did in 1962. There are new threats and new pesticides today, and the state of natural world is still in decline. I would like to believe that if she were alive today, Rachel Carson would be on the frontlines fighting the fight for nature – and we ought to continue her legacy.

Find out more about Rachel Carson

https://www.rachelcarson.org/

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/rachel-carson

https://lgbthistorymonth.com/rachel-carson

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/26/the-right-way-to-remember-rachel-carson

*quotes from Rachel Carson’s works