APPROXIMATELY 1865–1943 
BOTANIST UNITED STATES
It has always been the one great ideal of my life to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of “my people” possible.
—GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER
The farmer tried everything to get his corn to grow better—more water, different fertilizers—but nothing worked. He was at the end of his rope.
“Take this to the Carver place,” he told his son, handing a small, sickly-looking corn stalk to him. “Give it to the Plant Doctor.”
The farmer’s son had to walk miles to get there, and when he finally found the Plant Doctor, his jaw dropped open in shock. George Washington Carver, dubbed the Plant Doctor by his neighbors, was just eight years old! Yet, when young George took the unhealthy plant, he spoke with great confidence: “Don’t worry. I’ll put this in my garden and try some things out on it. I’ll figure out what’s wrong.”
When the farmer himself returned to the Carver place a few weeks later, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Like magic, his small, wilted corn plant was now tall, green, and healthy. “Here’s what you do . . .” and the young scientist described a new kind of fertilizer he’d created that would make the farmer’s sick corn grow like crazy. The man shook his head in wonder: How could a boy know so much about plants?
Eventually, this eight-year-old Plant Doctor of Missouri would grow up to become the Plant Doctor to the entire United States. His inventions would change the food we eat, and his ideas would help poor farmers grow successful crops and rise from poverty. He would become one of the most famous and respected scientists in the world!
The neighbor who found and returned baby George to the Carvers was given a horse as a reward.
It might be hard to believe, but this scientific genius was actually born into slavery! George Washington Carver and his mother were owned by Moses and Susan Carver. When George was still a baby, he and his mother were kidnapped by greedy Confederate raiders who planned to sell them out of state to the highest bidder. The Carvers offered a reward to get them back, but only George was found. The thieves had left the baby behind when they realized he was sickly. George’s mother was never seen again.
From that day on, the Carvers raised George and his brother, not as slaves, but as their own children. George was small and frail, but he knew that while his body might be scrawny, his brain was brawny. He was fascinated by nature and spent all his free time collecting things to study: plants, rocks, dirt . . . even bugs and frogs. He collected so much that the family built him an outdoor shed to keep it all in. By the time he was eight, George knew so much about nature that his neighbors went to him for advice. He experimented on sick plants in his secret garden in the woods until he made them healthy again.
More than anything, though, George wanted to go to school.
When just a mere tot . . . my very soul thirsted for an education. I literally lived in the woods. I wanted to know every strange stone, flower, insect, bird, or beast.
While George was traveling around getting an education, he lived for a time in a house he built himself . . . out of dirt! His sod house was so well built, all the neighbors asked for George’s help building theirs.
Although everyone in town knew how smart George was, the school for white children wouldn’t let him in. Unlike today, when all kids in America—black, white, and every other race—can go to public schools for free, George had no way to learn. Can you imagine wanting to learn so badly that you would walk hundreds of miles, sleep in barns, and work for your food, just to go to school? Well, that’s exactly what George did when he was only twelve years old! He set out on his own to get an education. He would find a school that would take him, work to pay his way, and learn everything the teachers knew, then take off again to find smarter teachers!
Going to college was George’s big dream. It took him years of hard work and travel, but at age thirty he finally finished enough classes and was the first African-American accepted to Iowa State College of Agricultural and Mechanic Arts. Even though he was officially accepted into the college, George still battled fear and prejudice on campus. He was forced to eat meals in the basement instead of in the dining hall with the other students. With quiet dignity, George held his head high, worked hard, and forced the students and faculty to face their racist attitudes.
Inventor Thomas Edison asked George to be his research partner and offered him a very high salary, but George turned him down because he felt the students at Tuskegee and the farmers in the South needed him more.
Before long he was truly accepted everywhere white students went, and he made many friends. At long last the Plant Doctor’s dreams came true when he earned his master’s degree in agriculture. Though he was offered many teaching jobs at white colleges, George chose to teach at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama, a college for African-Americans. Their Agriculture Department didn’t even exist before George arrived, so he and his students had to build everything from scratch, including their classroom! George taught his students to reuse everything they found—discarded bottles became beakers, and jar lids were melted down for chemicals to experiment with. Their department supplied all the food for the entire school, so they quickly learned the most efficient, cheapest ways to grow and manage their plants and animals.
George teaches farmers to recycle! At Tuskegee, George was thrilled to continue some of the research he started as a boy. All around him he saw problems facing poor farmers, so he put his brain to work fixing them. Many farmers couldn’t afford fertilizer, so George taught them to put their dead plants into a big pile, which eventually rotted down into free fertilizer! Nowadays we call this compost. You may even have a compost pile at your house. Feeding farm animals was also expensive, so George invented animal food made from acorns, which grow plentifully in the South and can be collected for free.
George saves the soil! The Plant Doctor helped farmers even more with his discoveries about cotton. This was the main crop grown in the South back then, but it quickly sucked up all the nutrients in the soil. After a few years of growing cotton, farmers couldn’t grow anything anymore in their exhausted fields. George discovered that certain plants actually put nutrients back into the soil. He taught farmers to use crop rotation, planting cotton one year, then a crop like peanuts, soybeans, or sweet potatoes the next, to put nutrients back into the soil and make their fields healthy again.
Peanuts were brought to America from Africa with the slaves, who called them goobers. Peanuts were used mostly to feed animals; humans didn’t think much of eating them until George came along.
George goes crazy with peanuts! The farmers didn’t know what to do with these strange new crops, so George did some more experiments and invented over three hundred uses for the peanut! He made peanut milk, butter, coffee, shampoo, dye, paint, paper, plastic, and even chop suey sauce! Then he invented a hundred ways to use the sweet potato—everything from chocolate to paste to ink. Thanks to George, everyone uses crop rotation now, and peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans are three of the most popular and profitable crops in the South!
The US government was so impressed with George’s achievements, officials named a submarine after him and put his face on a stamp and the half-dollar.
George’s ideas became so popular that soon farmers, black and white, from all over the South, were asking his advice. His reputation spread quickly, and in 1918, the US government invited him to the capital to tell them about his ideas. His brilliant work was starting to make him famous, and he won tons of awards . . . even from beyond the grave! In 1990, almost fifty years after he died, George became the first African-American to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
George had many passions. He loved art so much that he almost gave up science to become a painter. He painted on everything—cans, scraps of paper, the walls, the floor. One of his paintings, YUCCA AND CACTUS, was even displayed at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
Even with all the fame, George preferred the simple life. Unlike many scientists today, who make millions when they patent their inventions, George never asked for or earned any money from his many discoveries. He believed his ideas were given to him by God and should be shared with others for free. If people sent him checks for his help, he returned them. George worried that if he earned lots of money, he would get so busy taking care of the money that he wouldn’t have time for research. He was so devoted to science that he never married either. When asked why, George answered, “How could I explain to a wife that I have to go outdoors at four o’clock every morning to talk to the flowers?” He was quite happy with his research, knowing he was helping the world.
George continued his teaching and research at Tuskegee up until the day he died in 1943. At his funeral, President Franklin Roosevelt sadly remarked, “The world of science has lost one of its most eminent figures . . . his genius and achievement [were] truly amazing.” So, next time you eat a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich or spread fertilizer over your garden, maybe you’ll think of the young Plant Doctor and his unstoppable dreams.
Henry Ford, inventor of the assembly line, was such an admirer of George that he built a school and a museum named after him.