Rachel Carson's major contribution to the scientific community was a book called "Silent Spring" in which she detailed how DDT, which became available as a commercial pesticide starting in 1945, accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals and could cause cancer and genetic damage. Her foundation for this work lay in her career as a renowned nature author and a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Despite several bestselling books, such as "The Sea Around Us", Carson could not get a magazine to assign her to write about DDT, so she instead wrote about DDT in a book, with the ultimate conclusion that DDT and other pesticides harmed animals and contaminated the food supply. After "Silent Spring" was published in 1962, the book was met with a lot of backlash and attacks on its validity, but due to the meticulous research and vetting process Carson had included in her book, the issues DDT caused could not be denied. As a result, DDT was banned and the public started to become aware of how vulnerable nature is to human intervention.
-Nehal