May 17 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 17.

Patricia Bath patented an apparatus that removes cataracts.

She was an American ophthalmologist, inventor, and academic. 

Bath also became the first woman member of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, the first woman to lead a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology, and the first woman elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center, amongst other achievements. 

Holder of five patents, she also founded the non-profit American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C.

Bath was named head of the ophthalmology residency training program at Drew-UCLA in 1983. She was the first woman in the country to hold such a position.

In 1988 Bath became the first Black female doctor to earn a medical patent. Her technique of using lasers to remove cataracts has improved or restored the vision of millions of patients around the world.

In 1993 she was named Howard University Pioneer in Academic Medicine. That year Bath retired from the UCLA Medical Center and was the first woman elected to the center’s honorary medical staff.

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