George Washington Carver was born in Diamond, Missouri circa 1864, the son Giles and Mary Carver, both of whom were enslaved persons. He graduated from Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas in 1880, attended Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa in 1890 and graduated from Iowa State Agricultural College in 1894 with an undergraduate degree in Agriculture. He earned a graduate degree in Agriculture from the same institution in 1896.

After earning his graduate degree Carver accepted an offer from Booker T. Washington to head the agricultural department at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Macon County, Alabama. While at Tuskegee he invented a mobile horse-drawn agricultural classroom and laboratory to demonstrate soil chemistry, developed alternative feed and fertilizer methods that poor farmers could use, and worked to disseminate agricultural information to farmers.

His most notable achievement was his research on crop rotation; he found that raising nitrogen-fixing plants such as peanuts, soybeans, and sweet potatoes replaced soil nutrients that had been lost due to intensive cotton farming which resulted in higher yields when the land was returned to cotton farming. In order to encourage crop rotation, he researched alternative commercial uses for peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes, developing more that 300 potential food, industrial and commercial products for peanuts alone. Most of these discoveries did not find widespread application.

Due to his research with and promotion of peanuts Carver became famous first nationally and then internationally. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1923 and honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Simpson College in 1928 and from Selma University in 1942. Carver died at Tuskegee on January 5, 1943.