Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson was a US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who in 1962 published Silent Spring, an indictment of indiscriminate DDT use built from the existing entomological literature and bird-population data. The chemical industry's response was vicious: Monsanto distributed The Desolate Year, a parody depicting an insect-overrun America without pesticides; Velsicol Chemical threatened to sue her publisher; she was personally smeared as hysterical, communist, lesbian — anything that might invalidate the science. She was already dying of breast cancer; she defended the book on television in a wig hiding her chemotherapy hair loss; she lived to see Kennedy's Science Advisory Committee vindicate her findings, and died in 1964. Her contribution founded the modern environmental movement and led directly to the EPA in 1970 and the DDT ban in 1972. The Individualist signature is here in its cleanest form: she had crossed the conventional line — the data was the construct she was willing to follow against the institution that had trained her — and she paid the conventional price for it.