Elizabeth Peet

Elizabeth Peet (1874 to 1961) was an American educator of the deaf who taught at Gallaudet University for more than fifty years. She was born to a deaf mother and a hearing father and learned American Sign Language at an early age. She became a scholar of the history and etymology of ASL signs, and in 1950 U.S. Representative George P. Miller described her as a tiny lady who was considered the world's leading authority on sign language. Her half century of teaching at Gallaudet and her study of the origins of signs are the two things for which she is remembered.