Patricia Bath

Patricia Era Bath (born November 4, 1942, Harlem, New York) is an ophthalmologist credited as the first African American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical invention. Bath received the patent in 1988 for an "Apparatus for ablating and removing cataract lenses", a version of a device designed to help remove cataracts with a fiberoptic laser. Bath graduated with a baccalaureate degree from Hunter College in 1964, then from Howard University School of Medicine in 1968. She was the first female ophthalmologist at UCLA's prestigious Jules Stein Eye Institute and the first female African American surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center.