Botanist and Inventor George Washington Carver 1864-1943

Title

Botanist and Inventor George Washington Carver 1864-1943

Description

American Botanist and Inventor.

Dr. George Washington Carver was born in Diamond Grove, Missouri, around 1864. He is one of the United States' most famous agricultural scientists. He is best known for his research on peanuts and his commitment to helping poor Southern African American farmers.

Dr. Carver left Iowa for Alabama in the fall of 1896 to direct the newly organized department of agriculture at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, a school headed by the noted African American educator Booker T. Washington. After becoming the institute’s director of agricultural research he devoted his time to research projects aimed at helping Southern agriculture, demonstrating ways in which farmers could improve their economic situation. He conducted experiments in soil management and crop production and directed an experimental farm.

At that time agriculture in the Deep South was in serious trouble because the unremitting single-crop cultivation of  cotton had left the soil of many fields deplesaated of nitrogen. Erosion had then taken its toll on areas that could no longer sustain crops. As a remedy, Dr. Carver urged Southern farmers to plant peanuts and soybeans which, since they belong to the legume family, could restore nitrogen to the soil while also providing the protein so badly needed in the diet of many Southerners.

Among Carver’s many honours were his election to Britain’s Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (London) in 1916 and his receipt of the Spingarn Medal in 1923. Late in his career he declined an invitation to work for Thomas A. Edison at a salary of more than $100,000 a year. Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt visited him, and his friends included Henry Ford and Mohandas K. Gandhi. Foreign governments requested his counsel on agricultural matters: Joseph Stalin, for example, in 1931 invited him to superintend cotton plantations in southern Russia and to make a tour of the Soviet Union, but Carver refused.

In 1940 Carver donated his life savings to the establishment of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee for continuing research in agriculture.

Creator

Photographer Arthur Rothstein 1915-1985

Date

1942

Source

https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8d02000/8d02600/8d02674r.jpg, http://www.americaslibrary.gov/assets/aa/carver/aa_carver_subj_e.jpg

Relation

Source: Encyclopaedia Britanica Retrieved May 15, 2015

Rights

First photograph - Students in the greenhouse, Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.

Source: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection. Library of Congress Catalog Number owi2001002474/PP 

Second Photograph

Source: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection. Library of Congress Catalog Number owi2001046654/PP

Publisher

Library of Congress

Contributor

Library of Congress

Format

Medium: Photograph

Language

English

Type

Figures

Identifier

George Washington Carver, Agriculturel, Scientists, Peanuts, African-Americans, Farming, Botany, Alabama

Coverage

Historic

Files

https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8d02000/8d02600/8d02674r.jpg
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/assets/aa/carver/aa_carver_subj_e.jpg

Reference

Photographer Arthur Rothstein 1915-1985, Botanist and Inventor George Washington Carver 1864-1943, Library of Congress, 1942

Cite As

Photographer Arthur Rothstein 1915-1985, “Botanist and Inventor George Washington Carver 1864-1943,” Virtual Museum of Public Service, accessed March 29, 2024, https://vmps.omeka.net/items/show/546.