Frank Laubach
(1884-1970)
Frank Laubach is known as "The Apostle to the Illiterates" and "The Man Who Taught the World to Read" actually 60 million people in over thirty developing countries. He created alphabets for their languages, by carefully listening for all the sounds/phonemes in a language and developed a unique letter/grapheme for each one.
He founded Laubach Literacy (now ProLiteracy Worldwide, which with affiliates has taught nearly 3 million people to read worldwide.