Jacob Rodrigues Pereira

Jacob Rodrigues Pereira (April 11, 1715 to September 15, 1780) was a Portuguese Jewish educator and academic who became the first teacher of deaf students in France. He adapted Juan Pablo Bonet's manual alphabet, expanding it with roughly thirty handshapes corresponding to sounds and creating signs for numbers and punctuation, work that advanced manual language teaching for deaf people in eighteenth century Europe. His achievements brought him election to the Royal Society of London in 1759. He also advocated for Portuguese and Spanish Jewish communities in France, helping secure settlement rights in 1777.