african american inventor

African American Inventor Patricia Bath Dr. Patricia Bath, an Ophthalmological Surgeon, inventor, and activist for patient’s rights, was born November4, 1942 in Harlem, New York. She is the daughter of Rupert Bath, who was an educated and well travel merchant seaman and Gladys Bath, who was a homemaker and housecleaner. Dr. Bath had a passion for books, travel and science. She was good in biology, which showed in high school when she became editor of the Charles Evans Hugh School’s science paper. She had won multiple awards in science. In 1959, at age 16, Dr. Bath was chosen to participate in a summer program offered by the National Science Foundation at Yeshiva University. From that, Dr. Bath had derived a plan for predicting cancer cell growth. Dr. Bath entered New York’s Hunter College, where she studied chemistry and physics. In 1964, she earned her B.A from Hunter. After that, Bath attended Howard University, where she started medical school. In 1968, she received her M.D then returned to New York. After returning to New York, Bath served as an intern at Harlem Hospital, following a fellowship in ophthalmology at Columbia Hospital for one year. While at Harlem Hospital, Dr. Bath noticed nearly half of the African American patient’s there were blind or visually impaired. She started documenting the blacks who were nearly double the rate of blindness compared to the whites. Dr. Bath came to the conclusion that the cause of many African American’s blindness was due to the lack of access to ophthalmic care. Now studied and practiced worldwide, Bath developed a new discipline known as Community Ophthalmology because of her documenting the blindness among the two different races. Bath had a list of becoming the first to do and was continuing to expand that list. At New York University, Dr. Bath became the first African American resident there. In 1974, Bath was completing a fellowship in corneal and keratoporosthesis surgery. That same year, Bath moved to