Carver was a deeply devoted Christian. He attributed inspiration of his work to God, and his studies of nature convinced him of the existence and benevolence of the Creator: “Never since have I been without this consciousness of the Creator speaking to me….The out of doors has been to me more and more a great cathedral in which God could be continuously spoken to and heard from.”

Who:  George Washington Carver
What: Father of Modern Agriculture
When: 1864 or 1865—January 5, 1943
Where: Diamond Grove, Missouri

Probably no other scientist has had to face as many social barriers as George Washington Carver, the black American botanist noted for revolutionizing agriculture in the southern United States. He was born towards the end of the Civil War to a slave family on the farm of Moses Carver. As an infant, he and his mother and sister were kidnapped by Kentucky night raiders.

It’s unclear what happened to his mother and sister, but George was rescued and returned to the Carvers, who raised him and his brother James. He grew up in a deeply segregated world, and very few black schools were available in the South. But his love of learning inspired him to persevere despite various challenges, and he successfully graduated from Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas.

Entering college was even more difficult, but he was eventually accepted at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, to study art. In 1891, he transferred to Iowa State Agriculture College in Ames (now Iowa State University) to study botany, where he was the first black student and later the first black faculty member. While there, he adopted the middle name “Washington” to distinguish himself from another George Carver. He received his undergraduate degree in 1894 and his masters in 1896, and he went on to become a nationally recognized botanist for his work in plant pathology and mycology. After earning his masters, he joined Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (later Tuskegee University) in Alabama to teach former slaves how to farm for self-sufficiency.

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