Carver, George Washington

(c. 1861–1943) agricultural chemist, educator, botanist; born near Diamond Grove, Mo. Born to slave parents, he began his education at age 14 and earned a B.S. and M.S. in agriculture (1894, 1896) from Iowa State College. He directed the agricultural research department at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama (1896–1943), teaching and pioneering an extension program of "movable schools" to train black farmers in agriculture and home economics. Aiming to revitalize and conserve depleted soil, Carver influenced the southern shift from single-crop to diversified agriculture by developing hundreds of products made from peanuts, sweet potatoes, and other crops, many of them commercially viable. He developed a hybrid cotton and was a noted collector of fungi. Working with severely limited resources outside the white scientific establishment, Carver published little more than his 44 Tuskegee Experiment Station bulletins (1898–1942) and, wishing his work to be widely available, obtained only three patents; nevertheless he became a researcher of international stature. He chose not to challenge the system of segregation that existed during his lifetime, but he became one of the chief models of what African-Americans could accomplish.

References in periodicals archive

Meet the "Peanut Scientist," George Washington Carver, the inventor and professor who made over 325 products out of peanuts.

Junior fiction and nonfiction for grades 3 to 5

Perhaps chief among these was one of the few genuine antecedents of the modern ecological agriculture movement: George Washington Carver, the Tuskegee scientist, whose emergence in the 1920s as the iconic Peanut Man obscures his earlier agricultural and environmental thought.

The new environmental politics and its antecedents: lessons from the early twentieth century South

In the spirit of George Washington Carver, who turned peanuts into a major crop, Jay and I are on a mission to turn duckweed into a new industrial crop, providing an innovative approach to alternative fuel production."

Tiny super-plant can clean up hog farms and be used for ethanol production

George Washington Carver. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2008.41 pp.

Famous African American scientists: recommended books for young people

A man for all seasons: The life of George Washington Carver. Stephen Krensky.

Young scientists

Perhaps no work more famously exemplifies this tactic than Colescott's oft-reproduced George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook, 1975.

Truth to power: Huey Copeland on Robert Colescott (1925-2009)

BIO Opens Nominations for Annual George Washington Carver Award

Project: HVAC Renovation at George Washington Carver Elementary School No.

Top award winners

At that point, most representation of blacks in history books was only in reference to the low social position they held as slaves and their descendants, with the exception of George Washington Carver.

A wheelchair view of diversity

Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, George Washington Carver Center, 5601 Sunnyside Avenue, Beltsville, Maryland 20705.

High-tech cowboys

A sampling of names ranges from the less familiar, such as Beulah Louise Henry, known as Lady Edison, to such giants as Niels Bohr, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Peter Cooper Hewitt, Ben Moreell, and George Washington Carver, to name but a few.

A Biographical Dictionary of People in Engineering: From Earliest Records Until 2000

Many people today know George Washington Carver (1861-1943) largely from the myths that have grown around him.

George Washington Carver: a mighty vision beyond peanuts: "we are the architects of our own fortune and the hewers out of our own destiny."