Dr. Patricia Bath at home office, LA

Patricia Bath, M.D., ophthalmologist, inventor of the Laserphaco was born in Harlem, NY in 1942.  She is the daughter of Rupert Bath, an educated, well-traveled merchant seaman and Gladys Bath who was a homemaker and house-cleaner.

Dr. Bath’s parents emphasized education and being supportive, they encouraged their children to believe in their dreams and ideas.  Thus, Patricia Bath developed a love of books, especially science and excelled at school showing an aptitude in biology in high school becoming the editor of the Charles Evans Hughes high school’s science paper. She won numerous science awards and in 1959, she was chosen to participate in a summer program that was offered by the National Science Foundation at Yeshiva University when she was only 16 years old.

It was while working at Yeshiva that she gained notoriety when she derived a mathematical equation for predicting cancer cell growth. In 1960, one of her mentors in the program, Dr. Robert O. Bernard, incorporated her findings into a paper that he presented at an international conference held in Washington, D.C.

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