Alpha Kappa Alpha’s Dr. Patricia Bath Became the First Black Woman to Receive a Patent for a Medical Invention

Did you know that the ophthalmologist who transformed cataract surgery and became the first Black woman doctor to hold a medical patent was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.? Her name was Dr. Patricia Bath, and she spent her life restoring sight and breaking barriers in medicine.

Dr. Patricia Era Bath was born in 1942 in Harlem, New York. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Hunter College and went on to earn her medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine, the historically Black institution in Washington, D.C. She was initiated into Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.’s Lambda Chapter a historic city-wide undergraduate chapter chartered on April 22, 1922, in New York City, serving the Harlem community and Manhattan college campuses.

Bath’s medical career was a series of firsts. As the National Library of Medicine notes, between 1970 and 1973 she became the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology, training at New York University. In 1974, she joined the faculty of UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute as the first woman in its department of ophthalmology.

Her greatest breakthrough came in the laboratory. Bath invented the Laserphaco Probe, a device that used a laser to remove cataracts more precisely and gently than earlier methods, restoring sight to patients around the world, including some who had been blind for decades. When she received the patent for her invention in 1988, she became the first Black woman doctor to hold a patent for a medical purpose.

Bath believed that eyesight was a basic human right. In 1977, she co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness and helped pioneer the field of community ophthalmology, carrying eye care to communities that had long been overlooked.

Dr. Patricia Bath died on May 30, 2019, and was later posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, taking her place among the great American innovators.

From Howard University to the operating rooms and laboratories where she gave people back their sight, Alpha Kappa Alpha’s Dr. Patricia Bath changed medicine and lifted up her community.