Dr. Patricia E. Bath, an ophthalmologist, was president of the American Institute of Blindness when she received the Technical Innovation in Industry Award at the 1997 Women of Color (WOC) in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Conference.
She co-founded the American Institute for Prevention of Blindness in 1976, which aimed to address vision inequities. Dr. Bath was the first to document that Blacks suffered blindness at a higher rate than other groups.
In 2022, the National Inventors Hall of Fame announced that Bath (1942-2019) was one of eleven Historical Inductees.
She was among the first Black women to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Her daughter, Dr. Eraka Bath, said, "My mother's invention is as significant to the laser cataract surgery industry as Bell's telephone is to the telecommunications industry and Edison's light bulb is to the electric lighting industry."
Among her many achievements, Bath invented the laser phaco, a device and technique to remove cataracts.
The laser phaco performed all the steps of cataract removal, including making the incision, destroying the lens, and vacuuming the fractured pieces.
While a fellow, she was recruited by UCLA Medical Center and Charles R. Drew University to co-found an ophthalmology residency program at Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital.
After completing an ophthalmology residency at New York University, Bath completed a corneal transplant surgery fellowship at Columbia University.
Bath was the first Black woman to complete a residency in ophthalmology at NYU and the first woman to chair an ophthalmology residency program in the United States at Drew-UCLA.
She began her career at UCLA, becoming the first woman ophthalmologist on the faculty of its prestigious Jules Stein Eye Institute.
She was appointed assistant chief of the King-Drew-UCLA Ophthalmology Residency Program in 1974 and chief in 1983.
Bath conceived her laser phaco device in 1981, published her first paper in 1987, and had her first U.S. patent issued in 1988. Her minimally invasive device was used in Europe and Asia by 2000.
When Bath interned in ophthalmology, she was one of the first to document that Blacks had double the rate of glaucoma and realized that the high prevalence of blindness among Blacks was due to a lack of access to ophthalmic care.
In a seminal paper in 1976, she proposed the discipline of Community Ophthalmology, combining public health, community medicine, and clinical and daycare programs to test vision and screen threatening eye conditions in historically underserved communities.
In addition to co-founding the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, she also founded the Ophthalmic Assistant Training Program at UCLA, whose graduates worked on blindness prevention.
Bath has received numerous honors, including recognition by the National Science Foundation, the Lemelson Center, the American Medical Women's Association, the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the American Academy of Ophthalmology Museum of Vision & Ophthalmic Heritage, the Association of Black Women Physicians with its Lifetime Achievement Award for Ophthalmology Contributions, and by Alpha Kappa Alpha with its Presidential Award for Health and Medical Services.
