George Washington Carver
Meet the man who inspired commercial hybridization
Among them was Henry A. Wallace, the young son of a colleague, Iowa State professor Henry C. Wallace. Racial prejudice prevented Carver from living on campus. So in 1894, the Wallace family invited Carver to live in their home.
On free days, Carver agreed to six-year-old Henry’s request to accompany him on the long nature walks he had continued since his own youth. The two identified and collected specimens around the Ames campus: Iowa Tallgrass, Purple Prairie Clover, Rattlesnake Master, Butterfly Milkweed and myriads of others. Back at the greenhouse, the pair experimented with sick plants and crop breeding.
Carver left for Tuskegee two years later, but his influence was deep and lasting. At fifteen, Wallace conducted experiments that helped demonstrate the concept of hybrid vigor. In 1924, he began selling the first commercial hybrid seed corn. Two years later, Wallace founded the Hi-Bred Corn Company, which would eventually become Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., and is known today as DuPont Pioneer.
Like his father, Henry A. Wallace later became U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. His worldwide efforts to create more productive strains of corn and wheat, inspired by Carver, are credited with saving over one billion lives from starvation.
Wallace later wrote: “George Carver deepened my appreciation of plants in a way I could never forget. I feel I must pay him this debt of gratitude.”
When Carver died in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized Carver and his selfless lifetime of achievements and awards. “All mankind are beneficiaries of his discoveries in the field of agricultural chemistry,” said Roosevelt. “The things he achieved in the face of early handicaps are an inspiring example to youth everywhere.”
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