One of the most creative of all American minds, George Washington Carver was born in 1864 and spent some time in slavery in Arkansas. He achieved his BS and MS degrees from Iowa Agricultural College in the 1890s when he was the very first Black to graduate from this institution. In 1896 he joined Booker T Washington as an instructor at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he taught for more than forty years. Carver eventually concentrated his research on the industrial uses of the peanut, sweet potato, soybean, pecan, and cotton. His discoveries went far towards improving the agricultural industry in the southern states. Planters there had previously exhausted and impoverished the soil by focussing too narrowly on the cultivation of cotton. Carver persuaded them to improve the quality of their land by diversifying their crops. His amazing research programme developed 300 derivative products from peanuts - among them cheese, coffee, cosmetics, dyes, flour, ink, linoleum, medicinal oils, milk, plastics, soap, and wood stains - and 118 from sweet potatoes, including flour, ink, molasses, vinegar, a synthetic rubber, and postage stamp glue. He also succeeded in making synthetic marble from wood pulp. More interested in science than in money, Carver never attempted to patent his inventions. Others therefore profited more from his work than he himself did. His reward came in the form of sundry distinctions, even after his death on 5 January 1943. A postage stamp, for instance, was issued in his honour and the Carver National Monument was erected for the same purpose. He was named a Fellow of the London Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce in 1916, awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP in 1923, and the Roosevelt Medal for distinguished service to science in 1939. The Carver Museum was established at Tuskegee University In 1973, he was elected to the New York University Hall of Fame, and in 1977, George Washington Carver was finally enshrined in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. He is now universally recognised as one of the finest scientists the world has ever known. His name has been appropriated by countless black clubs, schools, lodges, movie theatres, banks and insurance companies. His efforts brought about a significant advance in American agriculture and, at the same time, considerably enhanced the influence and reputation of Tuskegee Institute.
CARVER, George Washington
