Shelli Liebman Dorfman

Staff Writer

D

r. Abraham Nemeth thinks he
retired in 1985, when he ended
a longtime professorship in
mathematics.
But since then, what he has created
for members of the blind community
— and especially for the Jewish blind
— rivals even his remarkable academ-
ic achievements. -
Blind since birth, Dr. Nemeth, who
turned 87 last Sunday, lives a life that
defies being disabled.
"I always figured out how to get
around things:' said Dr. Nemeth of
Southfield, who once devised a system
for soldering amateur radio parts. "I
can't pick up a newspaper and read it,
so I just I listen to the news on the
radio. I have always found an alterna-
tive way to do what I had to do!'
Seems like anything he needed that
wasn't already around, he created. A
mathematician, he has devised a mul-
titude of tools used by blind individu-
als. His circular Braille slide rule —
sold by the American Foundation for
the Blind — now sits in the Museum
of the National Federation for the
Blind. And the internationally used
standard Braille system for writing
math is his creation, aptly termed the
Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics
and Science Notation.
While teaching himself to play
piano, Dr. Nemeth discovered there
was no Braille music dictionary for
reading music signs in Braille, so, in
1954, he wrote one himself.
After his "retirement:' he began to
focus more closely on his ongoing
work of creating Braille Jewish texts,
some of which benefit area blind indi-
viduals.
According to JBI International (once
named Jewish Braille Institute) in New
York, of the 200,000-225,000 American
Jews who are blind and visually

Dr. Nemeth reads from a Braille prayer book he edited.

mg

October 20 . 2005

impaired, 40 metro Detroiters utilize
the agency's audio or large print medi-
ums and Braille texts, which include
those edited and compiled by Dr.
Nemeth.

Learning By Doing

Growing up in an Orthodox home on
New York City's Lower East Side, Dr.
Nemeth had no formal Jewish educa-
tion, but nonetheless became most
knowledgeable about Jewish ritual and
observance. "There was no material in
Hebrew schools for the blind;' he said.
"So my grandfather and my father
taught me what I needed to know. I
recited by bar mitzvah portion from
memory."
His childhood was not one of over-
protection. "I had very good parents:'
he said. "They let me live a rough-and-
tumble life." His father instilled in him
a sense of direction. "He would walk
with me through the streets and
always take a different route, telling me
things like, 'We are walking west, but
when we turn left at the corner, we will
be going south.' He also let me touch
the raised letters of mailboxes and
police call boxes, automobile license
plates and wooden block letters he
bought me so I would be aware of
what letters looked like."
And his mother worked on his con-
centration and his keen sense of calcu-
lation.
"She would send me to the grocery
store and have me memorize six or
seven items to buy',' he said. `And then
she'd make sure I brought them home,
and brought the right amounts and the
right change — at age d."

Old Love, New Career

Always interested in math, Dr.
Nemeth was known to teach it to his
friends even as a schoolboy.

True Visionary on page 18

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