Rachel Carson
Bách khoa toàn thư mở Wikipedia
 Ảnh Carson vào thập niên 1940 |
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| Sinh ngày: | 27 tháng 5, 1907 tại Springdale, Pennsylvania, Mỹ |
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| Mất ngày: | 14 tháng 4, 1964 |
| Nghề nghiệp: | nhà động vật học, nhà sinh học biển |
| Quốc tịch: | Mỹ |
| Giai đoạn sáng tác: | 1937-1964 |
| Chủ đề: | sinh thái, ô nhiễm, thuốc trừ sâu |
| Tác phẩm chính: | Mùa xuân thầm lặng |
| Ảnh hưởng bởi: | Natalie Angier, Sandra Steingraber, Marla Cone |
Rachel Louise Carson (27 tháng 5 năm 1907 – 14 tháng 4 năm 1964) là nhà động vật học và sinh học biển sinh tại Pittsburgh, Hoa Kỳ. Tác phẩm nổi tiếng của bà, Mùa xuân thầm lặng (Silent Spring), được ghi nhận là đã làm xuất phát điểm cho phong trào bảo vệ môi trường trên toàn cầu. Mùa xuân thầm lặng tạo ra một ảnh hưởng sâu rộng tại Hoa Kỳ và làm thay đổi chính sách quốc gia về thuốc trừ sâu. Rachel Carson được truy tặng huân chương tổng thống về tự do (Presidential Medal of Freedom).
Khi chúng ta quan tâm đến bản chất và những điều kỳ lạ của vũ trụ xung quanh chúng ta nhiều hơn, chúng ta sẽ giảm thiểu được những tác động phá hoại. – Rachel Carson
Mục lục |
[sửa] Cuộc đời và học vấn
Rachel Carson sinh năm 1907 tại một nông trang gia đình nhỏ gần vùng Springdale, Pennsylvania. Khi còn là một đứa trẻ, bà dành hàng giờ để hỏi han mẹ về các ao hồ, cánh đồng và khu rừng. Ban đầu, bà tới trường để học tiếng Anh và viết văn nhưng sau đó chuyển sang học về chuyên ngành sinh vật biển. Năng khiếu về viết giúp bà rất nhiều trong lĩnh vực mới, nó giúp bà làm cho "động vật trong nước hay trong gỗ trở lên sống động đối với người khác cũng như sống động đối với tôi". Bà tốt nghiệp loại xuất sắc trường Đại học Nữ sinh Pennsylvania, ngày nay gọi là Đại học Chatham, vào năm 1929. Mặc dù khó khăn về tài chính, bà tiếp tục học về động vật học và di truyền học tại Đại học Johns Hopkins University. Tại đây, bà nhận bằng thạc sĩ về động vật học vào năm 1932. Carson tham gia giảng dạy động vật tại đại học Johns Hopkins và đại học Maryland trong vài năm. Bà tiếp tục học chương trình tiến sỹ tại phòng thí nghiệm sinh vật biển tại Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Điều kiện kinh tế của bà vốn đã khó khăn càng trở lên tồi tệ hơn khi năm 1932, cha bà chết để lại cho bà trách nhiệm chăm sóc mẹ. Do đó, bà không thể tiếp tục học hết chương trình tiến sỹ. Thay vào đó, bà hoàn thành luận văn tiến sỹ với tiêu đề "Sự phát triển tiền thận trong giai đoạn phôi và ấu trùng của cá trê (catfish) Ictalurus puncatatus". Sau đó, bà làm việc bán thời gian cho cục thủy sản Hoa Kỳ với vị trí là một người viết bài khoa học. Tại đây, bà phải chịu đựng và cố gắng vượt qua sự phản đối khi bà, một người phụ nữ, lại đăng ký tham gia kỳ thi tuyển chọn dịch vụ công (American Civil Service Exam). Dù vậy, bà đã vượt qua tất cả các ứng viên khác trong kỳ thi năm 1936 và trở thành người phụ nữ đầu tiên được làm việc lâu dài với vị trí là nhà sinh học biển tại Ngành Cá và Động Thực Vật Hoang Dã Hoa Kỳ (US Fish and Wildlife Service) thuộc Cục Thủy Sản (Bureau of Fisheries).
[sửa] Sự nghiệp và các xuất bản phẩm
Với vị trí của mình tại Cục Thủy Sản Hoa Kỳ, Carson tham gia viết nhiều thể loại từ sách dạy nấu ăn tới các bài báo khoa học. Bà trở nên nổi tiếng với khả năng viết bài có chất lượng cao của mình. Một lần, trưởng phòng điều tra khoa học trực thuộc cục thủy sản, người đã giúp bà tìm việc, đã từ chối xuất bản một trong những bản thảo của bà với lý do "quá văn chương". Thay vào đó, ông khuyên bà gửi nó tới tạp chí Atlantic Monthly. Bản thảo đã được chấp nhận và xuất bản với tiêu đề "Dưới Đáy Biển" (Undersea) vào năm 1937 trong cho sự ngạc nhiên và vui sướng của bà. Cùng năm đó, trách nhiệm của bà đối với gia đình càng nặng nề hơn khi chị gái của bà chết ở tuổi 40 và để lại cho bà trách nhiệm nuôi nấng 2 cháu gái.
Nhà xuất bản Simon & Schuster rất ấn tượng với tác phẩm "Dưới Đáy Biển" của bà và đề nghị bà phát triển bài báo này nhằm xuất bản dưới dạng sách. Sau vài năm làm việc vào các buổi tối, quyển sách "Dưới Làn Gió Biển" (Under the Sea-Wind) ra đời và được đánh giá xuất sắc mặc dù nó thất bại về mặt thương mại. Lý do là nó được xuất bản chỉ 1 tháng trước khi xảy ra vụ Trân Châu cảng, sự kiện dẫn đến việc Hoa Kỳ tham gia chiến tranh thế giới thứ 2.
Carson rose within the Bureau (by then transformed into the Fish and Wildlife Service), becoming chief editor of publications in 1949. For some time she had been working on material for a second book: it was rejected by fifteen different magazines before The Katie serialized parts of it as A Profile of the Sea in 1951. Other parts soon appeared in Nature, and Oxford University Press published it in book form as The Sea Around Us. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 86 weeks, was abridged by Reader's Digest, won the 1952 National Book Award, and resulted in Carson being awarded two honorary doctorates. It was also made into a documentary film that was 61 minutes long and won an Oscar.
With success came financial security, and Carson was able to give up her job in 1952 to concentrate on writing full time. She completed the third volume of her sea trilogy, The Edge of the Sea, in 1955. Through 1956 and 1957, Carson worked on a number of projects and wrote articles for popular magazines.
Family tragedy struck a third time when one of the nieces she had cared for in the 1940s died at the age of 36, leaving a five-year-old orphan son. Carson took on that responsibility alongside the continuing one of caring for her mother, who was almost 90 by this time. She adopted the boy and, needing a suitable place to raise him, bought a rural property in Maryland. This environment was to be a major factor in the choice of her next topic.
[sửa] Mùa Xuân Thầm Lặng và việc cấm DDT
- See also: Timeline of environmental events
Starting in the mid-1940s, Carson became concerned about the use of newly invented pesticides, especially DDT. "The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became," she wrote later, explaining her decision to start researching what would eventually become her most famous work, Silent Spring. "What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important."
Silent Spring focused on the environment, and pesticides in particular. It was known as Carson's crusade, and she worked on this book till death. Carson explored the subject of environmental connectedness: although a pesticide is aimed at eliminating one organism, its effects are felt throughout the food chain, and what was intended to poison an insect ends up poisoning larger animals and humans.
The four-year task of writing Silent Spring began with a letter from a close friend of Carson's. It was from a New Englander, Olga Owens Huckins, who owned a bird sanctuary. According to the letter, the sanctuary had been sprayed unmercifully by the government. The letter asked Carson to immediately use her influence with government authorities to begin an investigation into pesticide use. Carson decided it would be more effective to raise the issue in a popular magazine; however, publishers were uninterested, and eventually the project became a book instead.
Now, as a renowned author, she was able to ask for (and receive) the aid of prominent biologists, chemists, pathologists, and entomologists. She used Silent Spring to create a mental association in the public's mind between wildlife mortality and over-use of pesticides like dieldrin, toxaphene, and heptachlor. Her cautions regarding the previously little-remarked practices of introducing an enormous variety of industrial products and wastes into wilderness, waterways, and human habitats with little concern for possible toxicity struck the general public as common sense, as much as good science; "We are subjecting whole populations to exposure to chemicals which animal experiments have proved to be extremely poisonous and in many cases cumulative in their effects. These exposures now begin at or before birth and - unless we change our methods - will continue through the lifetime of those now living."
Even before Silent Spring was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, there was strong opposition to it. As Time Magazine recounted in 1999:
Carson was violently assailed by threats of lawsuits and derision, including suggestions that this meticulous scientist was a "hysterical woman" unqualified to write such a book. A huge counterattack was organized and led by Monsanto, Velsicol, American Cyanamid - indeed, the whole chemical industry - duly supported by the Agriculture Department as well as the more cautious in the media.
Scientists such as American Cyanamid's Robert White-Stevens (who wrote "If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth."[1]), chemical companies, and other critics attacked the data and interpretation in the book. Some went further to attack Carson's scientific credentials because her speciality was marine biology and zoology, not the field of biochemistry. Some went as far as characterizing her as a mere birdwatcher with more spare time than scientific background, calling her unprofessional. A fringe of her critics even accused her of being a communist.
In addition, many critics repeatedly asserted that she was calling for the elimination of all pesticides despite the fact that Carson had made it clear she was not advocating the banning or complete withdrawal of helpful pesticides, but was instead encouraging responsible and carefully managed use with an awareness of the chemicals' impact on the entire ecosystem. In fact, she concludes her section on DDT in Silent Spring not by urging a total ban, but with Practical advice should be "Spray as little as you possibly can" rather than "Spray to the limit of your capacity." [2]
Houghton Mifflin was pressured to suppress the book, but did not succumb. Silent Spring was positively reviewed by many outside of the agricultural and chemical science fields, and it became a runaway best seller both in the USA and overseas. Again, Time Magazine claimed that, within a year or so of publication, "all but the most self-serving of Carson's attackers were backing rapidly toward safer ground. In their ugly campaign to reduce a brave scientist's protest to a matter of public relations, the chemical interests had only increased public awareness.” [3]
Pesticide use became a major public issue, helped by Carson's April 1963 appearance on a CBS TV special in debate with a chemical company spokesman. Later that year she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received many other honors and awards, including the Audubon Medal and the Cullen Medal of the American Geographical Society.
Despite the acceptance of Carson's claims in the 60's, criticism of Carson's work and its effects has grown as developing nations struggle to battle infectious diseases nearly eradicated by DDT.[cần chú thích]
Carson received hundreds of speaking invitations, but was unable to accept the great majority of them. Her health had been steadily declining since she had been diagnosed with breast cancer halfway through the writing of Silent Spring. In one of her last public appearances, Carson testified before President Kennedy's Science Advisory Committee, which issued a report on May 15 1963 largely backing Carson's scientific claims(http://www.nwhp.org/tlp/biographies/carson/carson-bio.html). However, she never did live to see the banning of DDT in U.S. She died on 14 April 1964, at the age of 56. In 1980, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the USA.
[sửa] Di sản của Rachel Carson
Silent Spring remains a founding text for the contemporary environmental movement in the West and is seen as an important work to this day.
The Rachel Carson State Office Building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is home to the Commonwealth's Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
On 22 April 2006, to celebrate Earth Day, the Ninth Street Bridge in Pittsburgh was formally renamed Rachel Carson Bridge [4]; see also Rachel Carson Homestead.
Between 1964 and 1990, 650 acres (260 hectares) near Brookeville in Montgomery County, Maryland were acquired and set aside as the Rachel Carson Conservation Park. The Hawlings River runs through this undeveloped park and there are both hiker and equestrian trails through both meadow and woodland. It is administered by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission.
There are also public elementary schools named after her in San Jose, California and Gaithersburg, Maryland, and a middle school named after her in Herndon, Virginia. In Beaverton, Oregon, there is an optional middle school program named after her which is focused on environmental sciences.
The Rachel Carson Prize was founded in Stavanger, Norway in 1991, and is awarded to women who have made a contribution in the field of environmental protection.
A Sense of Wonder, a one-woman play based on the life and works of Rachel Carson -- written and performed by stage and screen actress Kaiulani Lee -- has toured the U.S., Canada, England and Italy since 1995. The two-act play takes place in Carson's Maine summer home (act one) and in her Silver Spring, Maryland home (act two) after the release of her book Silent Spring. The play has been performed at regional and national conferences, more than one hundred universities, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., the Albert Sweitzer Conference at the United Nations, the Sierra Club Centennial in San Francisco, and the Department of the Interior 150th Anniversary Celebration.
2007 is the centennial of Rachel Carson's birth. The Rachel Carson Homestead Association is planning four major events throughout the year including a May 27 birthday party and sustainable feast at her birthplace and home in Springdale, Pennsylvania.
[sửa] Sách
- Under the Sea Wind, 1941, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group, 1996, ISBN 0-14-025380-7
- The Sea Around Us, 1951, Oxford University Press, 1991, ISBN 0-19-506997-8
- The Edge of the Sea, 1955, Mariner Books, 1998, ISBN 0-395-92496-0
- Silent Spring, Houghton Mifflin, 1962, Mariner Books, 2002, ISBN 0-618-24906-0
- Silent Spring initially appeared serialized in three parts in the 16 June, 23 June, and 30 June 1962 issues of The New Yorker magazine
- The Sense of Wonder, 1965, HarperCollins, 1998: ISBN 0-06-757520-X published posthumously
- Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, Beacon Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8070-8547-2
- Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman 1952-1964 An Intimate Portrait of a Remarkable Friendship, Beacon Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8070-7010-6 edited by Martha Freeman (granddaughter of Dorothy Freeman)
[sửa] Tài liệu tham khảo
- Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, Linda Lear, Henry Holt, New York, 1997, Owl Books paperback 1998: ISBN 0-8050-3428-5
- Rachel Carson: A Biography, by Arlene Quaratiello. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. ISBN 0-313-32388-7
[sửa] Liên kết ngoài
- The Rachel Carson Council
- RachelCarson.org
- The Rachel Carson Homestead
- Rachel Carson Online Book Club March 1-November 30, 2007
- Silent Spring Institute
- Time magazine's "100 most important people" article on Carson
- New York Times obituary
- Big Picture TV video of chemist Michael Braungart discussing Rachel Carson's legacy
- Bridge to be named for Rachel Carson
- The Mosquito Killer by Malcolm Gladwell
- Silent Spring at 40: Rachel Carson’s classic is not aging well Reason Online, 12 June 2002
- Biography resources dedicated to Rachel Carson
- Kaiulani Lee's Sense of Wonder site
