Linda Lear

biographer, Rachel Carson

Linda Lear was educated at Women's schools and finished graduate work at Columbia University. Before finishing her doctorate, she taught American history and ended up teaching in Washington, D.C. in the late 1960s-just in time to become an activist. Linda have had a long career in college and university teaching and have written a variety of books and articles, specializing in environmental history. Lear held Fellowships at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Library and at the Smithsonian Institution. With the publication of her biography of Rachel Carson, *Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature*, in 1997, her writing and lecturing career began. The biography of Carson was awarded the prize for the best book on women in science by the History of Science Society for 1998. A new edition will be published in 2009. Linda Lear's *Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature*, the biography of the famous children's author and illustrator Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) was published in the UK by AllenLane/Penguin in January 2007, and by St. Martin's Press in the US by St. Martin's Press. It won the Lakeland Book of the Year prize in 2007, the most prestigious of England's regional literary prizes; the first time ever given to an American writer. The biography appeared in paper in both countries in 2008. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of my alma mater, Connecticut College and honored with the Goodwin-Niering Center Alumni Environmental Achievement Award in 1999. In 2007, Chatham College (now Chatham University) awarded Lear an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.