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George Washington Carver
I attended a presentation this evening on “Rapidly Renewable Resources-Bio-Based Products” at CCGT, and the speaker, Grant Grable of GreenProducts talked about an early pioneer of agri-industrial natural oil products.
Carver at work in his the lab at the Tuskegee Institute (images courtesy of Tuskegee University)
George Washington Carver (1864-1943), a former slave, botanist, agricultural chemist, artist, and member of the Royal Society of Arts, was dedicated to the advancement of Southern agriculture.
After overcoming the significant odds of growing up black after the Civil War, Carver managed to obtain a high school education, proceeded to Simpson College, Iowa, then attended Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) where he received a degree in agricultural science in 1894 and a master’s degree in 1896.
The brilliant scientist was shortly recruited at Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University). Here Carver developed a crop rotation method which alternated soil-depleting cotton, corn, and tobacco crops with enriching ones such as peanuts, peas, soybeans, sweet potatoes, and pecans. His experiments with these crops led to worldwide improvements and applications numbering in the hundreds in the form of foods (including peanut butter!), dyes, paints, adhesives, fuels, plastics, and many more.
Carver with Henry Ford, 1930 (left); planting crops (right)
A collaboration with Henry Ford produced synthetic rubber from goldenrod and automobile interiors and body panels from soy. Thomas Edison even tried to establish a partnership, leading to an offer of a handsome yearly salary, which Carver declined in order to continue to teach and carry out research at Tuskegee.
Had the petroleum industry not conspired to monopolize the basis for most industrial chemistry in the U.S., Carver’s low-impact and sustainable applications would be in more widespread use. As bio-based products gain greater prominence today in the face of heightened environmental awareness, Carver’s efforts may well lead the way back again - and away from petroleum dependency.
Carver’s laboratory setup
Learn more
American Visionaries: Legends of Tuskegee (beautiful photo archive!)
About.com
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