Freeman, Dorothy, 1898-1978

Dorothy Murdoch (1898-1978) grew up in the coastal town of Marblehead, Mass. and spent summers with her family in Southport, Me. She worked in home economics until her marriage to Stanley Freeman in 1924. Their only child, Stanley Freeman Jr., was born in 1926. In 1952, when Dorothy learned Rachel Carson was building a cottage on Southport, she wrote to Carson. The following summer the Freemans met Rachel Carson and began what would become, for Rachel and Dorothy, a profound and intimate friendship.

Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was a biologist, ecologist, and science writer. Born in Springdale, Pa., she won scholarships to attend Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College), graduating as a science major in 1929. She received an MA in zoology in 1932 from the Johns Hopkins University. Carson saw the sea for the first time as a graduate student at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory and continued her studies there for the next decade. She published Under the sea wind in 1941, and a decade later followed it with The sea around us. Although she was committed to numerous other projects, the misuse of pesticides dominated Carson's thinking after 1957. Silent spring was published in 1962 after four years of grinding research. Carson's work initiated the contemporary environmental movement and aroused public opinion to a variety of environmental concerns.

...