George Washington Carver: Renaissance Man

George Washington Carver invented some 300 uses for the peanut, including soaps, lotions, shaving cream and paper—but peanut butter was not one of them. Native Americans developed a peanut paste centuries before Carver, and it was Marcellus Gilmore Edson and John Harvey Kellogg who first patented the stuff in the 1800s.

Even so, Carver’s talents as a scientist and humanist were many. He was a painter, singer and piano teacher. In addition to his hundreds of peanut recipes, he also invented dozens of uses for soybeans, sweet potatoes, and pecans. And he brought the idea of crop rotation to poor southern farmers whose soils had been depleted by the cotton boom.

Alabama’s Tuskegee University, where Carver spent much of his life, has been celebrating the 150th anniversary of Carver’s birth this year. Cathie Woteki of the U.S.D.A. and Dana Chandler of Tuskegee University offer this tribute.