Time Magazine once called George Washington Carver a “Black Leonardo,” a title worthy of this great scientist, educator, botanist, and inventor.

Carver was born in Diamond Grove, Missouri, in January 1864, although the exact date is unknown; some evidence suggests it may have been 1861. His slave parents, Mary and Giles, were owned at the time by German American immigrant Moses Carver.

Not long after his birth, George, along with his Mother, was kidnapped by Confederates from Arkansas and sold in Kentucky. Turmoil would soon prevail. Moses Carver moved into action, hiring a man named John Bentley to find them. Fortunately for George, Bentley tracked him down, and Moses negotiated his return to Missouri, with the ransom being a racehorse valued at $300. Unfortunately, George’s mother, Mary, wasn’t found.

Not long after his return to Missouri, slavery ended for his family. George was a sickly child, now orphaned, and Moses Carver and his wife, Susan, took him and his brother under their wings. Due to his frailty, Carver wasn’t required to do the more laborious chores around the farm and spent a lot of time exploring nature and tending the Carvers’ gardens around the house. Flowers around the property flourished, and when a visitor asked George how to make her own prettier, he told her to “love them.”

George’s talent earned him recognition in the small community of Diamond Grove, and people began calling him the Plant Doctor. He even made house calls, prescribing remedies for sick plants or taking them into the woods, where he had a secret garden, to nurse them back to health.

During this time, Susan Carver taught George how to read since black children were not allowed in the local schools. George had a thirst for knowledge, so when he saw several black children going into a school during a trip to Neosho, ten miles south, he immediately knew he had to attend. At the time, only 11 years old, he told the Carvers that he would move to Neosho to attend school, saying he would figure out how to provide for himself using some of the knowledge he had gained from Susan. The Carvers decided not to stop him, and George made his way there.

His first night was spent in the loft of a barn near the schoolhouse. The next morning, as George awaited the school to open, he met Mariah Watkins, reportedly the owner of the home and barn where he had stayed. He stated that he wanted to rent a room and identified himself as “Carver’s George,” explaining that he intended to attend the school as a student. Carver later recalled that Watkins replied that from then on, his name would be “George Carver.”  She also made an impression on young George when she said, “You must learn all you can, then go back into the world and give your learning back to the people.”

Carver’s educational path spanned several schools. At age 13, he wanted to attend an academy in Fort Scott, Kansas, but didn’t stay long after witnessing a group of whites kill a black man. After attending several other schools, Carver finally earned his diploma from Minneapolis, Kansas, High School.

Applying to several colleges, he was accepted at Highland College in Highland, Kansas, in 1886. His hopes of higher education were immediately dashed upon arrival as the college rejected him due to his race. From there, he wound up in Ness County, Kansas, where he homesteaded a claim. There, he maintained a small conservatory of plants and flowers along with a geological collection. He also maintained 17 acres of crops ranging from rice and corn to fruit trees while earning money as a ranch hand and doing odd jobs in nearby Beeler.

He managed to get an education loan from the Bank of Ness City and left there in 1890 to study art and piano at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. His art teacher, recognizing Carver’s talent for painting plants and flowers, encouraged him to study botany. That same year, he became the first black student at Iowa State Agricultural College in Ames.

After completing his Bachelor’s Degree, a couple of his professors encouraged him to continue his education at Iowa State for his Master’s. During this time, he did research at the Iowa Experimental Station, which gained him his first national recognition and respect as a botanist.

Carver had tremendously helped the farmers of the South learn to improve their depleted soils through crop rotation, restoring nitrogen to the soil. This practice, taught by Carver and several other agricultural experts, improved cotton yields and provided farmers with alternative crops, including sweet potatoes, soybeans, and others. His works had even been publicly admired by President Theodore Roosevelt early on, who was familiar with Carver through former professors in Iowa who had gone on to serve in his cabinet.

During his 47 years at the Tuskegee Institute, he reputedly discovered 300 uses for peanuts and hundreds more for soybeans, pecans, and sweet potatoes. However, he only obtained three patents, none of which were commercially successful. Additionally, Carver left no records of his product creation and did not maintain a laboratory notebook. Although credited in the past with inventing peanut butter, that is not entirely accurate, as other cultures have been making it for centuries. In addition, Marcellus Gilmore Edson was awarded a patent for the manufacture of peanut butter in 1884 when Carver was only 20.

During the last couple of decades of his life, Carver gained widespread recognition and traveled extensively to promote the benefits of the Tuskegee Institute, peanuts, and racial harmony, despite his limited commercial successes. He met with three U.S. Presidents (Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, and Franklin Roosevelt), and even the Crown Prince of Sweden studied with him for several weeks. And although some say his claims to fame were exaggerated, he still left an incredible legacy in agriculture. He died on January 5, 1943, having never married. Buried beside Booker T. Washington in Tuskegee, his grave says, “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”

In July of that same year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated funds for the George Washington Carver National Monument near Diamond, Missouri. This was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and the first to honor someone other than a President. In 1977, Carver was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, and in 1990, into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. These are but a few of his honors, as there are dozens of schools named after him, and many institutions continue to honor him today.