Scientist, Inventor. He was an American inventor who developed three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more for soybeans, pecans, and sweet potatoes. Born a slave about 1864 on Moses Carver's farm near Diamond Grove, Missouri, as an infant, he, a sister, and his mother, Mary, were kidnapped during the American Civil War by Confederate night-raiders and possibly taken to Arkansas. Most sources state his father was a slave named Giles, who died in an accident before his birth. Carver found him, but his mother was never found. After the American Civil War, he developed an interest in nature on Carver's farm, earning the nickname "The Plant Doctor," and collected in earnest all manner of rocks and plants. With his brother James, he began his education on Carver's farm before leaving as a teenager. Traveling west, he would work harvesting wheat, chopping wood, and working as a cook, but he continued to study and eventually earned a high school diploma in Kansas. He opened a laundry and enrolled at Simpson College and, in 1891, Iowa Agricultural College, which is in the 21st century Iowa State University. As the first African American student, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1894 and a Master of Science degree in bacterial botany and agriculture in 1897 from Iowa Agricultural College. He later became the first African-American member of the faculty of Iowa Agricultural College, teaching classes about soil conservation. In 1897, Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee University in Alabama, convinced George Washington Carver to come south and serve as the school's Director of Agriculture, where he remained until his death in 1943. Only three patents were ever issued to him during his lifetime, but among his numerous listed discoveries are: adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes, instant coffee, linoleum, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder and wood stain. He did not patent or profit from most of his products; he freely gave his discoveries to mankind. In 1940, he donated his life savings to the establishment of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee, to continue research in agriculture. Besides his scientific endeavors, he was an oil-on-canvas painter as well as a musician. George Washington Carver was bestowed several honors in his lifetime for his works, which included being named a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London in 1916, an honorary doctorate from Simpson College in 1928, the Spingarn Medal in 1923 by the NAACP, and the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for restoring Southern agriculture. On July 14, 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt honored him with a national monument dedicated to his accomplishments, which was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and first to a non-president. The site was his childhood home on Moses Carver's 240-acre farm near Joplin, Missouri. In 1951 the site became a National Park, and in 1966, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There is also the George Washington Carver Museum on the campus of Tuskegee University in Alabama, where he is buried. He never married.