Carver George Washington
Car·ver
(kär′vər), George Washington 1864?-1943. American botanist, agricultural chemist, and educator who enumerated hundreds of uses for the peanut, soybean, and sweet potato and encouraged Southern farmers to produce these soil-enriching cash crops.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Car·ver
(kär′vər), George Washington 1864?-1943. American botanist, agricultural chemist, and educator whose work was instrumental in improving the agricultural efficiency of the United States. Carver taught Southern farmers, whose soil was depleted from growing cotton, the importance of techniques to improve the soil, including the variation of crops from season to season. To encourage them to do so he developed hundreds of uses for the peanut, soybean, and sweet potato, making them important cash crops.
Biography After the Civil War, Southern farmers had a big problem: their cotton crops grew smaller year after year. George Washington Carver discovered and developed a way to restore the vitality of the soil by replenishing its organic materials. He introduced two new crops—peanuts and sweet potatoes—that would produce well in Alabama soil. To make them economically beneficial to farmers, he created 325 products made from peanuts, including plastics, synthetic rubber, shaving cream, and paper. He developed hundreds of other products from sweet potatoes and dozens of other native plants. Carver also introduced movable schools that brought practical agricultural knowledge directly to farmers.
The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.