Valentin Haüy

Valentin Haüy (born Nov. 13, 1745, Saint-Just-en-Chaussée, France—died March 18, 1822, Paris) was a French professor of calligraphy known as the “father and apostle of the blind.” He was the brother of René-Just Haüy.

After seeing a group of blind men being cruelly exhibited in ridiculous garb in a Paris sideshow, Haüy decided to try to make the life of the blind more tolerable and help them gain a sense of usefulness. He set out by hiring a blind beggar boy to submit to instruction. In 1784 he established the National Institution for Blind Youth, Paris (afterward a state-supported school for blind children), where Louis Braille, inventor of the most widely used alphabet for the blind, was a student and later a teacher; in 1785 the school was renamed the Royal Institution for Blind Youth. Haüy foreshadowed Braille’s work by discovering that sightless persons could decipher texts printed in embossed letters and by successfully teaching blind children to read.