Patricia Bath
Laserphaco Probe | Buillth — Never Forget
She restored sight to people who had been blind for thirty years. She invented the laser device that made it possible, held the first medical patent ever granted to a Black female doctor in the United States, and led residency programs that no Black person or woman had led before. Patricia Bath did not accept what the world told her was possible for someone who looked like her.
Who Was Patricia Bath?
Patricia Era Bath was born in 1942 in Harlem, New York — the daughter of a subway motorman who was one of the first Black conductors for the New York City subway system, and a mother who saved money for her education by working as a domestic worker. Her parents were committed to her becoming something that the world around her was not yet designed to help her become.
Bath was exceptional from the start. She received a National Science Foundation scholarship in high school. She finished a three-year pre-med program in two years at Hunter College. She entered Howard University College of Medicine, where she conducted research on cancer that was presented at an international conference — while she was still a student.
She completed an internship at Harlem Hospital, where she noticed immediately that the rate of blindness among the Black patients served by that hospital was twice as high as among the patients at the predominantly white Columbia University Eye Clinic nearby. She designed a study to understand why, led the first ophthalmological study at Harlem Hospital, and connected the disparity to a lack of access to preventive eye care.
This was before she invented anything. She was already changing how medicine thought about eye disease in Black communities.
The Invention That Changed Everything
Cataracts — a clouding of the lens of the eye — are one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide, and one of the most treatable. The conventional treatment involved manually removing the clouded lens using a mechanical instrument — an effective approach, but one limited by the precision and the physical characteristics of the tools available.
In 1981, Bath began working on a laser-based alternative. She developed the Laserphaco Probe — a device that used a laser to ablate (vaporize) the cataract, creating an opening through which the remaining material could be washed out, while a new lens was simultaneously irrigated into place. The procedure was faster, more precise, and less traumatic to the surrounding eye tissue than conventional methods.
She patented it in 1988 — becoming the first Black female doctor to receive a medical patent in the United States. The device was tested first in Europe, where she had access to the laser equipment she needed, and the results were dramatic. Patients who had been blind for decades regained their sight.
The moment when a patient who has not seen for 30 years suddenly sees again — that is what the Laserphaco Probe made possible.
What History Did With Her Name
Bath received recognition over the course of her career, but that recognition came slowly and against resistance. She was the first Black person and the first woman to chair an ophthalmology residency program in the United States, at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA — a position she achieved after experiencing racial and gender discrimination that she documented and fought.
She founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness and dedicated much of her life to the idea that "eyesight is a basic human right." She received five patents total. She was inducted into the International Women in Medicine Hall of Fame.
She died in 2019. The technology she invented continues to inform modern cataract surgery, which is now one of the most common surgical procedures performed in the world — approximately 28 million procedures annually.
Why It Still Matters
Cataracts affect an estimated 94 million people worldwide. The laser-based surgical approach that Bath pioneered has influenced the development of phacoemulsification and laser-assisted techniques that are now standard in ophthalmology. The principle she worked toward — using precision energy rather than mechanical tools to treat the eye — defines the modern approach to cataract removal.
Millions of people see today because of where she pointed the science. She should be impossible to forget.
Patricia Bath is part of the Buillth Never Forget collection. Her story is on the shirt. Now you know.