Alexander Graham Bell was a famous scientist, teacher of deaf people1 and inventor, who is widely known for the creation of the telephone. His father, grandfather and brothers had all been associated with work on speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf. The family greatly influenced Bell's life and work, making him look past people’s disadvantages and find solutions to help them.

Alexander Bell was born in 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. As a young child, Bell received his early schooling at home from his parents. At the age of 10 he asked his father for a middle name like his two brothers. For his 11th birthday, his father allowed him to adopt the middle name "Graham", which was the surname of a close family friend. However, for most of his life he remained "Aleck" to close relatives and friends.

Alexander attended the Royal High School in Edinburgh, which he left at age 15, completing the first four forms only. He was not a good pupil, to the disappointment of his father. His main interest was in the sciences, especially biology, and he was indifferent to other school subjects. After graduation from university, Bell became his father's assistant. He taught deaf people to talk by using his father's system.

Both of Bell's brothers died of tuberculosis. In 1870 his family, in search of a healthier climate, moved to Canada. Soon, Alexander was invited to Boston to teach at Sarah Fuller's School for the Deaf, the first such school in the world. Throughout his life Alexander Bell continued to educate deaf people.

From 1873 to 1876 Bell experimented with many inventions, including an electric speaking telegraph (the telephone). The money for his work came from the fathers of two of his students. One of these men had a deaf daughter, Mabel, who later became Bell's wife.

In 1876, at the age of 29, Alexander Bell invented his telephone and in 1877, he created the Bell Telephone Company. By 1886, over 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. Later, Bell company engineers made numerous other improvements to the telephone. However, Bell considered his most famous invention an interruption to his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.

Although Alexander Graham Bell is most often associated with the invention of the telephone, his interests were extremely varied.

The magazine Science was founded in 1880 because of Bell's efforts. He took part in creating the National Geographic Society and became its second President. He was also involved in hydrodynamics (the study of the forces of water), and projects related to the development and design of aeroplanes. Alexander Graham Bell had 18 patents granted in his name alone and he shared 12 with colleagues. Bell's inventions included a metal jacket to assist in breathing, a device to locate icebergs, a metal detector, and investigations on how to separate salt from seawater.

Bell died at the age of 75 on August 2, 1922. His contribution to the modern world and its technologies was enormous.