6. Patricia Bath (1942 – 2019)
Patricia Era Bath was an ophthalmologist and laser scientist, as well as an advocate for blindness prevention, treatment, and cure. She is also known as the first Black female physician to receive a patent.
Bath was motivated into pledging her life to medicine when she heard about Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s service to lepers in the Congo.
Bath became popular for her Laserphaco – a device and technique designed to remove cataracts in 1981. The invention helped to restore the sight of thousands of patients around the world and was the only one available to perform the surgery.
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She earned a Merit Award in 1960 from Mademoiselle Magazine and also received the Edwin Watson Prize for Excellence in Ophthalmology.
