- Abraham Nemeth
Abraham Nemeth (born 1918) is an American mathematician and inventor.
He is Professor Emeritus of
Mathematics at theUniversity of Detroit Mercy inDetroit, Michigan .Early life
Dr. Nemeth was born in
New York City on theLower East Side ofManhattan into a large family of HungarianJew ish immigrants who spokeYiddish . He is blind frombirth .He attended public schools at first but did most of his primary and secondary education at the Jewish Guild for the Blind school in
Yonkers, New York . Hisundergraduate studies were atBrooklyn College where he studiedpsychology . He earned a Master of Arts degree in Psychology fromColumbia University .Dr. Nemeth studied mathematics and physics at
Brooklyn College . He did not major in mathematics because his academic advisors discouraged him. However, tired of what he felt were unfulfilling jobs at agencies of the blind, and with the encouragement of his wife, he decided to continue his education in mathematics.Academic career
Nemeth taught part-time at various colleges in New York. 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. Nemeth distinguished himself from many other blind people by being able to write visual print letters and mathematical symbols on paper and blackboards just like sighted people, a skill he learned as a child. Nemeth says that this skill allowed him to succeed in mathematics, during an era without much technology, during which even Braille was difficult to use in mathematics. During the 1950s he moved to
Detroit, Michigan to accept a position at the University of Detroit. He remained there for 30 years, retiring in 1985. During the late 1960s he studiedcomputer science and began the university’s program in that subject.Importance to mathematics and blindness
As the coursework became more advanced, he found that he needed a
braille code that would more effectively handle the kinds of math and science material he was tackling. Ultimately, 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. In the course of his studies, Dr. Nemeth found that he needed to make use of sighted readers to read otherwise inaccessible math texts and other materials. Likewise, he needed a method for dictating his math work and other materials for transcription into print. The conventions Dr. Nemeth developed for efficiently reading mathematical text out loud have evolved into MathSpeak.Dr. Nemeth was instrumental in the development of the
Unified English Braille Code though he eventually parted ways with others developing the code and is currently working on a parallel effort which he calls the Universal Braille System.Post-retirement
Nemeth continues to be active, continuing to work on the Nemeth code. Nemeth has been active in the Jewish community since childhood, and since his retirement from academic mathematics he has been transcribing
Hebrew prayer books into Braille.Dr. Nemeth is an active member of the
National Federation of the Blind . He has written several short stories and made speeches for the NFB about his life as a blind mathematician. On February 11, 2006, Nemeth suffered a massive heart attack and is currently recovering. He was well enough to attend the July 2006 NFB convention and accept the 2006 Louis Braille award which the organization gave him.Trivia
Nemeth’s obituary has been prematurely published twice in Jewish and blindness-related magazines, when workers at the magazines believed he had died when in fact his brother and wife had actually died.
Nemeth is a member of the
United States Democratic Party but was appointed by a Republican governor of Michigan as chairman of the state commission for the blind, a position in which he served for 2 years, though he says that he does not like politics.External links
* [http://www.gh-mathspeak.com/nemeth.php Profile of Abraham Nemeth at the MathSpeak Initiative web site]
* [http://www.ed.arizona.edu/dvi/DVIIQ/2001/Nemeth.htm Profile of Abraham Nemeth at the Division on Visual Impairment of the Council for Exceptional Children]
* [http://www.nccu-vitp.net/NCCVIB/ North Carolina Conference on Visual Impairment and Blindness page with a biographical section on Dr. Nemeth]
* [http://www.nextbook.org/features/feature_nemeth.html Interview with Abraham Nemeth at nextbook.org]
* [http://www.rit.edu/~easi/easisem/talkmath.htm Information on the origins and rules of MathSpeak]
* [http://www.nfb.org/Images/nfb/Publications/books/kernel1/kern0314.htm “To Light A Candle with Mathematics”: a short story by Nemeth] published in the short story collection “As The Twig Is Bent”, part of the NFB Kernel Book series.
* [http://www.nfb.org/Images/nfb/Publications/bm/bm06/bm0608/bm060805.htm Nemeth’s Braille Award]
* [http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:L9fSsa2pTBUJ:www.ncsu.edu/dso/events/nemeth_transcipt.pdf+Nemeth+Jewish+Braille+Review&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4 Speech by Nemeth]
* [http://www.nyise.org/photoblog/nemeth.html Photo Blog to Dr. Nemeth's 3 day visit to The New York Institute for Special Education (October 2007)]
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