Historically Famous People with Blindness or Visual Impairments
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological and/or neurological factors. Complete blindness is the total lack of form and light perception and is clinically recorded as “No Light Perception” or “NPL”. Eye injuries, mostly occurring in people under 30, are the leading cause of monocular blindness (vision loss in one eye). People who are blind or visually impaired have devised a number of techniques that allow them to complete daily activities using their remaining senses and recently created accessible technology such as screen reading software enables visually impaired people to use mainstream computer applications including the Internet. Listed below are historically famous people with visual impairments including total blindness, sight conditions, or blindness in one eye.
Louis Braille (January 4, 1809 – January 6, 1852): Louis Braille became blind after he accidentally stabbed himself in the eye with his father’s awl. He later became an inventor and the designer of braille writing, which enables people who are blind to read by feeling a series of organized bumps representing letters. This concept was beneficial to all blind people from around the world and is still commonly used today. If it were not for Louis Braille’s blindness he may not have invented this method of reading and no other blind person could have enjoyed a story or been able to comprehend important written materials.
Harriet Tubman (c. “in approximately” 1820 – March 10, 1913): Harriet Tubman was a slave throughout her youth, being treated as an animal until she eventually escaped captivity. She was an abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. When she had reached Canada she did not stay to enjoy her freedom. She returned to the lands and brought hundreds of black slaves back to safety, saving them from slavery by escaping in what was then called The Underground Railroad. After a severe wound to the head, which was inflicted by a slave owner before her escape, she became a victim to vision impairment and seizures. That did not keep her from tossing her fears aside and to keep fighting for the freedom of her people.
Galileo Galilei (February 15, 1564 – January 8, 1642): Galileo Galilei was a Tuscan (Italian) astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and philosopher being greatly responsible for the scientific revolution. Some of his accomplishments include improvements to the telescope, accelerated motion and astronomical observations. Galileo was the first to discover the four largest satellites (moons) of Jupiter which were named the Galilean moons in his honor. Galileo had also improved compass design and eventually opposed the geocentric view. His sight started to deteriorate at the age of 68 years old and it eventually led to complete blindness.
Dr. Abraham Nemeth (October 16, 1918 – October 2, 2013): Dr. Nemeth was an American mathematician and inventor. He was Professor of Mathematics at the University of Detroit Mercy in Detroit, Michigan. Though his employers were sometimes reluctant to hire him knowing that he was blind, his reputation grew as it became apparent that he was a capable mathematician and teacher. He developed the Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics and Science Notation in 1952. Nemeth Code has gone through 4 revisions since its initial development and continues in wide use today. Dr. Nemeth is also responsible for the rules of MathSpeak, a system for orally communicating mathematical text. Dr. Nemeth is an active member of the National Federation of the Blind. He has written several short stories and made many speeches for the NFB about his life as a blind mathematician.
John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674): John Milton was a civil servant, English poet and prose polemicist. Milton was well known through his epic poem Paradise Lost and also for his radical views on republican religion. He never was well adjusted in school and once got expelled for having a fist fight with his tutor. Eventually he began to write poetry in English, Latin and Italian. John Milton became blind at the age of 43 in 1651, and has written books containing quotes of how the experience sometimes made him miserable.
Andrea Angel Bocelli (September 22, 1958 – Present): Andrea is an Italian tenor and has recorded over 20 pop and classical albums, as well as seven complete operas. He has sold over 65 million albums worldwide. It was evident at birth that he had problems with his sight, and after visits to many doctors Bocelli was diagnosed with glaucoma. In 1970, at the age of 12, he completely lost his sight after an accident during a soccer game. As a young boy, Bocelli showed a great passion for music. At the age of six he started piano lessons before he also learned to play the flute, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, harp, guitar and drums. Bocelli once said “I don’t think a singer decides to sing, it is the others who choose that you sing by their reactions.” Bocelli has sung with other great singers such as Pavarotti and has only been further admired due to his blindness.
Joseph Pulitzer (April 10, 1847 – October 29, 1911): Joseph was a Hungarian-American publisher best known for posthumously establishing the Pulitzer Prizes (along with William Randolph Hearst) and for originating yellow journalism. In 1882 Pulitzer purchased the New York World, a newspaper that had been losing $40,000 a year, for $346,000 from Jay Gould. Pulitzer shifted its focus to human-interest stories, scandal, and sensationalism. At the age of 42 Joseph became blind due to retinal detachment leaving him no choice but to retire.