George Washington Carver Biography

George Washington Carver was a celebrated botanist and inventor at a time when it was still rare for African-Americans to reach those heights.

The son of a Missouri slave, George Washington Carver grew up to attend Iowa State University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1894 and a master’s in 1896. He then joined the faculty of Booker T. Washington‘s Tuskegee Institute. Carver’s attempts to find crop alternatives to cotton led him to study and work with the peanut. Eventually he created more than 325 products from the humble legume, helping to create demand for the plant and establish it as a major American crop.

Although George Washington Carver is often credited with inventing peanut butter,  it seems others had created that product before Carver began his own work with peanuts. Carver also worked with sweet potatoes, soybeans and pecans, among other plants, and his work helped change the face of agriculture in the American south.