Women In STEM Archives - Carve Her Name

27 September 202227 January 2025

Sixty years of Silent Spring

Rachel Carson standing in front of a bookcase in 1962. Overlaid is the cover of her book Silent Spring

Olga Owens Huckins watched the birds falling lifeless all around her property in Massachusetts in January 1958. It was just after the area had been sprayed with DDT from a plane. She wrote to the Boston Herald and sent a copy of her letter to her friend Rachel Carson. Carson was a marine biologist and a best-selling nature writer who was already very concerned about the use of man-made chemicals, especially pesticides, on the natural world.

Carson already had three best-selling non-fiction books: Under the Sea Wind, The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea. She added her friend’s letter to the evidence she was building for her next book.

10 June 201927 January 2025

Valentina Tereshkova reaches orbit: 16 June 1963

Valentina Tereshkova in her spacesuit, preparing for launch

On 16 June 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, orbiting the Earth 48 times in Vostok 6. With her flight, she clocked up more hours in space than all the preceding American manned missions combined. She remained the only woman to have flown in space for 19 years and she remains the only woman to have completed a solo space mission.