Famous Deaf People, Each Named by an Official Record

How this list was built

Popular lists of famous deaf people mix confirmed cases with rumors. This page keeps a person only when a federal or state source names them as Deaf, deaf or deafblind and states their public role: the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, GovInfo, the National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota's deaf commission and governor's office, and the Obama White House archive.

The list is grouped by field, not ranked. It describes what each person did, never the cause of their hearing loss. Where a source capitalizes Deaf, the cultural and linguistic identity, we keep its spelling. Our page on deaf vs hard of hearing explains the terms, and our page on how many people are deaf gives the national counts.

Deaf athletes: Hoy in baseball, Coleman in the NFL

William Ellsworth Hoy played Major League Baseball as a deaf player. A Library of Congress teaching post names him, notes the nickname "Dummy" Hoy that he was given, and asks students to discuss why terms such as "deaf and dumb" are no longer used.

Derrick Coleman played fullback for the Seattle Seahawks. On May 21, 2014, President Obama welcomed the 2014 Super Bowl champions to the White House and said, in remarks printed in the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents, that Coleman "has been legally deaf since he was 3 years old".

Deaf actors, artists and composers

Marlee Matlin was the first Deaf actor to win an Oscar, and Troy Kotsur, her co-star in CODA, the second and the first Deaf male actor to win it, according to the participant biographies of a National Endowment for the Arts summit.

John and Andrew Carlin, both Deaf artists, grew up in Philadelphia in the early 1800s. The National Park Service writes that John Carlin became the first Deaf American artist to study abroad. Cadwallader Lincoln Washburn (1866–1965) appears in Minnesota's 2025 Deaf History Month proclamation as a well-known Deaf artist.

Ludwig van Beethoven composed his final symphony, No. 9 in D Minor, after he had become completely deaf, the Library of Congress Magazine notes. Our page on Beethoven's deafness dates his hearing loss year by year and lists the ear trumpets he used.

Education, law and public life

Helen Keller is listed by the National Park Service as an educator, author and political activist, and the first deafblind person to receive a Bachelor of Arts. In 1837, Samuel Gridley Howe invited Laura Bridgman, a deafblind child, to attend the Perkins Institution for the Blind.

Haben Girma was the first deafblind student at Harvard Law School, as her profile on the Obama White House archive site reads, written while she was on her way to becoming a disability rights lawyer.

Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts in the United States, became almost completely deaf as a young adult, according to the National Register nomination of her Savannah house. Heather Whitestone, Miss America 1994, was the first woman with a disability to be named Miss America; a 1997 guide written for the New York State Education Department and archived by ERIC notes that she preferred to read lips and speak rather than use sign language interpreters.

Minnesota's Deaf History Month honorees

Minnesota's governor named Deaf Minnesotans in the 2024 and 2025 Deaf History Month proclamations, and the state's deaf commission publishes its own history pieces. Together they document:

• Olof Hanson, "widely regarded as the nation's first Deaf architect", in the words of the commission.
• Agatha Tiegel Hanson (1873–1959), the first female graduate of Gallaudet University.
• Blanche Wilkins Williams (1876–1936), the first African American woman to graduate from the Minnesota State Academy of the Deaf.
• Doug Bahl (1950–2014), a Deaf historian.
• Gerald "Bummy" Burstein (1926–2018), a teacher and parliamentarian.