Patricia Bath, born in Harlem, New York on November 4, 1942, was a brilliant scientist and ophthalmologist. She aided in the furtherment of treatment and cure for forms of blindness, becoming the first woman and African American among those in her area of medicine.
Among her many accomplishments were those such as becoming the first female ophthalmologist appointed to the Jules Stein Eye Institute of the University of California in 1974 and the first African-American woman to receive a medical patent for her work (though by the time of her death in 2019, she had 5 patents to her name).
Perhaps the most outstanding achievement of them all is her invention of the laserphaco, a method and machine used to eliminate cataracts in someone’s eye. Nearly 65 million people are said to have cataracts today, which obstruct vision by creating cloudy spots on the lens of the eye. Thus Bath’s invention, which innovated a way to safely remove cataracts and restore vision to people who were deemed incurable in the past. Today, the laserphaco is used all across the world.
