Dr. George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver was a Black scientist and inventor famous for his work with the peanut; he invented more than 300 products involving the crop, including dyes, plastics, and gasoline, but not peanut butter. Born enslaved, Carver developed an interest in botany and eventually earned a master’s degree from the Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University). He became a longtime teacher at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an advocate for farmers, and an internationally renowned botanist who consulted for President Theodore Roosevelt and Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. Carver died in 1943 around age 78 and became the first African American to have a national monument created in his honor.