George Washington Carver was a botanist and chemist, born into slavery on January 5, 1861, in Missouri. He was best known for his work with the peanut, creating more than 200 new uses for the plant, including recipes, cosmetics, lubricants, etc. He also worked with soybeans and sweet potatoes, attempting to persuade Southern farmers to plant them over cotton, for the sake of the soil that had been ravaged by plants that only took a few nutrients and never returned them.

At birth, he, a sister, and his mother were kidnapped by raiders from Arkansas, selling them in Kansas. Moses Carver hired a John Bentley to find them, and upon doing so, negotiated with the raiders for the infant George. Bentley was rewarded for his efforts. When slavery had been abolished, Moses and his wife decided to raise the young George as their own child, encouraging him to follow his intellectual pursuits, teaching him the basics of reading and writing.

Carver tried applying to several colleges, before finally being accepted by Highland College in Highland, Kansas. They ultimately rejected him, though, due to revealing his race when he arrived. He was then accepted into Simpson College in Iowa, studying art and piano. When his teacher noticed his skill at painting plants and flowers, she encouraged him to study botany at the Iowa State Agricultural College, which he did. He was the first black student to attend. He went on to get his master’s degree in botany, then teaching at the school, being the first black teacher there.

In 1896, Booker T. Washington invited Carver to teach at Tuskegee Institute, as head of the Agricultural Department. He accepted, teaching there for 47 years and developing the department into a strong research center, working with two additional college presidents during his time there. He taught about crop rotation, introduced several alternative cash crops for farmers that would also improve the soil of areas where cotton was grown mostly, initiated research into crop products, called chemurgy, and taught generations of black students farming techniques for self-sufficiency.

To convince Carver to move to Tuskegee, Washington gave him an above average salary and two rooms for his personal use, both of which were disliked by other faculty. Because he had earned a master's in a scientific field from a "white" institution, some faculty thought of him as an arrogant young man.

One of Carver's duties was to administer the Agricultural Experiment Station farms. He had to manage the production and sale of farm products to generate revenue for the Institute. He soon proved to be a poor administrator. In 1900, Carver complained that the physical work and the letter-writing required were too much. In 1904, an Institute committee reported that Carver's reports on yields from the poultry yard were exaggerated, and Washington confronted Carver about the issue. Carver replied in writing, "Now to be branded as a liar and party to such hellish deception it is more than I can bear, and if your committee feel that I have willfully lied or [was] party to such lies as were told my resignation is at your disposal."

During Washington's last five years at Tuskegee, Carver submitted or threatened his resignation several times: when the administration reorganized the agriculture programs, when he disliked a teaching assignment, to manage an experiment station elsewhere, and when he did not get summer teaching assignments in 1913-1914. In each case, Washington smoothed things over.

Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. Together with other agricultural experts, he urged farmers to restore nitrogen to their soils by practicing a systematic crop rotation: alternating cotton crops with plantings of sweet potatoes or plants such as peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas. These both restored nitrogen to the soil and the crops were good for human consumption. Following the crop rotation practice resulted in improved cotton yields and gave farmers alternative cash crops. To train farmers to successfully rotate and cultivate the new crops, Carver developed an agricultural extension program for Alabama that was similar to the one at Iowa State. To encourage better nutrition in the South, he widely distributed recipes using the alternative crops.

During the last two decades of his life, Carver seemed to enjoy his celebrity status. He was often to be found on the road promoting Tuskegee, peanuts, and racial harmony. Although he only published six agricultural bulletins after 1922, he published articles in peanut industry journals and wrote a syndicated newspaper column, "Professor Carver's Advice". Business leaders came to seek his help, and he often responded with free advice.

Upon returning home one day, Carver took a bad fall down a flight of stairs; he was found unconscious by a maid who took him to a hospital. Carver died January 5, 1943, at the age of 78 from complications (namely, anemia) resulting from said fall. He was buried next to Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee University. Due to his frugality, Carver's life savings totaled $60,000, all of which he donated in his last years and at his death to the Carver Museum and to the George Washington Carver Foundation.