Patricia Bath: Doctor Who Invented A Laser Technique For Cataract Surgery
Courtesy of Patricia Bath via ScholasticIf it wasn’t for Patricia Bath, laser techniques used in cataract surgery wouldn’t exist.
Patricia E. Bath was born in Harlem in New York City on Nov. 4, 1942. Her father, Rupert, was an immigrant from Trinidad and worked as a motorman for the New York City subway system, while her mother, Gladys, worked as a housekeeper. Growing up, Bath was a highly curious child whose interest in science was sparked after her parents bought her a chemistry set.
“I wanted to pretend-play and model myself after scientists,” she said in an interview with Time. “When we would play nurse and doctor, I didn’t want to be forced to play the role of the nurse. I wanted to be the one with the stethoscope, the one who gave the injections, the one in charge.”
Bath excelled in school, and by 17 she was already featured in the New York Times after she helped write a cancer study that was presented at the International Congress on Nutrition in Washington. She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry and physics at Manhattan’s Hunter College, and earned her medical degree at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
After graduation, she returned to New York for an internship at Harlem Hospital while she was finishing a fellowship at Columbia University. The racial disparities in access to healthcare that Bath saw opened her eyes to the lack of equality for many people in need of medical help.
“Disproportionate numbers of Blacks are blinded by preventable causes,” Bath wrote in 1979. “However, thus far, no national strategies exist for reducing the excessive rates of blindness among the Black population.”
Patricia Bath devoted much of her medical research to provide access to underserved populations. But the hurdles she faced as a Black female doctor underlined the racism within both academia and medicine.
Her achievements secured her a faculty position in the department of ophthalmology at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at U.C.L.A., making her the first woman to do so. Yet her office was relegated to the basement — right next to the animal lab. After raising a diplomatic complaint, she was moved to a better space. “I didn’t say it was racist or sexist,” Bath recalled. “I said it was inappropriate.”
By the early 1980s, the disproportionate blindness among African Americans she found in her studies led to her innovation in medicine. She envisioned a method of using laser technology in eye surgery to remove a cataract, a condition that severely clouds a person’s vision.
“Her idea was more advanced than the technology available at the time,” read Bath’s biography in the special exhibit Changing the Face of Medicine under the National Library of Medicine. “It took her nearly five years to complete the research and testing needed to make it work and apply for a patent.”
The breakthrough revolutionized ophthalmology and cemented Bath as the first Black woman doctor to receive a medical patent. Still, the racism and sexism she faced in the United States were devastating enough to drive her to take a sabbatical in Europe.
Despite her own challenges, Bath was a fierce advocate for science education for girls. In 1976, she helped found the nonprofit American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, which championed what Bath called “community ophthalmology,” advancing people’s optic health through grassroots screenings, treatments, and education.
She continued to blaze a trail for women in science and Black inventors until her death in 2019 at the age of 76.
