Category: Biology & Life Sciences, Education, United States
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Rachel Louise Carson, noted biologist and environmentalist who fascinated readers with three books on the wonders of the sea and awakened the American public to the dangers of pesticide misuse with a highly controversial bestseller, was born on May 27, 1907, in Springdale, Pennsylvania. She was interested in writing at an early age and submitted a number of juvenile stories, poems, and essays to leading youth magazines. Rachel Carson's first book, Under the Sea Wind , attracted little notice on its appearance in 1941. However, her second book on the sea, The Sea Around Us (1951), remained on the best-seller lists for eighty-six weeks, was eventually translated into thirty languages, and received many awards.
History of Medicine Rewriting the Book of Nature Charles Darwin and Evolutionary Theory Charles Darwin’s vision—“from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved”—now forms the foundation of the biological sciences. Radical in sweep, Darwin’s idea of naturally innovating and endlessly changing webs of life undercut all previous sciences. Darwin was instantly seen as a potent sign of a new science, a new way of conceiving the world. His theory was an immediate threat not just to those who were wedded to an older conception, but to all who relied on a given and settled order for meaning and for power.
