Carver, George Washington

Carver, George Washington (b. near Diamond Grove, Mo., ca. 1864; d. Tuskegee, Ala., 5 January 1943) Born into slavery, Carver earned a college degree in 1891 at Iowa State College and joined Tuskegee Institute’s faculty in 1896 as the agriculture department’s chair. He excelled as an experimental chemist and discovered 300 by-products or new uses for familiar crops (including over 100 from the peanut and sweet potato), which collectively helped diversify southern farming away from an overdependence on cotton. He used his life savings to found Tuskegee’s Carver Research Foundation in 1940.