George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver was a world-renowned chemist, botanist and inventor, but he is best known for his unending research on one simple crop sown on countless southern farms: the peanut.

Carver believed that peanuts were a good alternative crop to cotton for poor farmers in the late 1800s and early 1900s, not only because of their nutritional value, but because they were a source of other products to improve their quality of life. 

Revitalized land, revitalized economy

Carver proved that planting peanuts would greatly improve the soil quality of farmland — which had been severely damaged and depleted from years of planting cotton — at little cost. Crop rotation between peanut and other crops in succeeding years was beneficial in keeping the farmland fertile and continues to be a method successfully used by farmers today. 

His peanut research was credited in helping to revitalize the depressed southern economy.

Carver developed 105 peanut recipes and more than 100 products with peanuts as the primary component, including dyes, paints, plastics and gasoline.

One of his many books, “How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption,” a 40-page kitchen guide that was published in 1916, is still in print today.

But Carver’s fame was not limited to developing uses for peanuts. He also established sweet potatoes as the main source for more than 100 products.

“He is better known as the greatest Negro scientist alive, the man who pioneered new uses for Southern agricultural products, developed 285 new uses for the peanut, got 118 products, including vinegar, molasses and shoe blacking, from the South’s surplus sweet potatoes,” said Booker T. Washington, who in 1896 hired Carver to head Tuskegee Institute’s agriculture department.

Carver was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, in the mid-1860s, although the exact date is not known. His father died before he was born and his mother was kidnapped weeks after his birth. His owners taught Caver how to read and write, and when he was 11 he left to attend a school for African Americans in nearby Neosho, Missouri.

He later attended State Agricultural College in Ames, Iowa, where he earned his bachelor’s and graduate degrees before teaching and research.