George Washington Carver became one of the leading agronomists of his time, pioneering numerous uses for peanuts, soybeans, and sweet potatoes. Born a slave in Missouri in midst of the Civil War, Carver was fascinated by plants from an early age. As the first African-American undergraduate student at Iowa State, he studied soybean fungi and developed new means of crop rotation. After earning his master’s degree, Carver accepted a job at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute, a leading university of African Americans. It was at Tuskegee that Carver made his greatest contributions to science, developing more than 300 uses for the peanut alone, including soap, skin lotion, and paint. (information from thoughtco.com)