Educator. A staunch advocate of sign language for the deaf, he is remembered as the first administrator and superintendent/president of the deaf school that is now known as Gallaudet University in Washington DC. He was the youngest child of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet who co-founded with Louis Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell, the first deaf school in North America (now known as the American School for the Deaf). His mother, Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, was deaf and was one of his father's first pupils. After graduating from Hartford High School in Hartford, Connecticut at the age of 14, his father died and he obtained employment at a bank. At age 20, he went to worked at his father's school while studying at Trinity College in Hartford, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree. In 1857, philanthropist and former US Postmaster General Amos Kendall requested him to come to Washington DC to become the first head administrator of a new school that he had established, called the Columbia Institution for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, and he accepted, serving from 1857 until 1910. In 1864 he obtained college status for the Columbia Institution from President Abraham Lincoln and it became known as the National Deaf-Mute College. The following year, Congress renamed it the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and he served as its president until 1910, as well as the president of its board of directors until 1911. During his life he received many honorary degrees, including a Master of Arts from Trinity College (1859), a Doctor of Laws and Doctor of Philosophy from Columbian University (later renamed George Washington University) in Washington DC (1869), and a Doctor of Laws from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut (1895). After retiring from Gallaudet, he returned to Hartford where he died at the age of 80. In 1954 Congress changed the corporate name to Gallaudet College, which had been the official name since 1894, and in 1986 Congress made it a full-fledged university. A statue in his honor resides on the campus of Gallaudet University.