Carver In Agriculture
American educator and an outstanding innovator in the agricultural
sciences.
Carver was born of slave parents near Diamond, Missouri. He
left the farm where
he was born when he was about ten years old and
eventually settled in
Minneapolis, Kansas, where he worked his way
through high school. Following his
graduation in 1894 from Iowa State College
of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now
Iowa State University), Carver
joined the college faculty and continued his
studies, specializing in
bacteriological laboratory work in systematic botany.
In 1896 he became
director of the Department of Agricultural Research at
Tuskegee Normal
and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University), where he
began an
exhaustive series of experiments with peanuts. Carver developed
several
hundred industrial uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans and
developed
a new type of cotton known as Carver's hybrid. His discoveries
induced southern
farmers to raise other crops in addition to cotton. He also
taught methods of
soil improvement. In recognition of his accomplishments,
Carver was awarded the
Spingarn Medal in 1923 by the National Association
for the Advancement of
Colored People. In 1935 he was appointed
collaborator in the Division of Plant
Mycology and Disease Survey of the
Bureau of Plant Industry of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. In 1940
he donated all his savings to the
establishment of the George Washington
Carver Foundation at Tuskegee for
research in natural science. Carver died at
Tuskegee, on January 5, 1943. His
birthplace was established as the George
Washington Carver National Monument in
1943.