Samuel Bowen (died 30 December 1777) was an English entrepreneur and farmer who established an estate in Savannah, Province of Georgia, where he cultivated the first soya beans in North America.
[1][2] On 8 February 1758, Bowen travelled to Canton (now known as Guangzhou), in China aboard the 600-tonne (590-long-ton; 660-short-ton) British East India Company (EIC) ship Pitt, via Madras, where the vessel joined up with smaller two-masted tender Success.
[9] On his new estate, Bowen began to grow soya beans, then known as "Luk Taw" or "Chinese vetch", from which he made soy sauce and vermicelli noodles.
He suspected that the sprouts of his plants had antiscorbutic properties that would be of use to the British Royal Navy in their fight against scurvy, research that led to his receiving a gold medal from the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in 1766[8] and a gift of £200 from King George III.
[10] The following year, Bowen received a patent from the British government for his "new invented method of preparing and making sago, vermicelli and soy from plants growing in America, to be equal in goodness to those made in the East Indies".