Dentistry Research During the Depression Lays Foundation for NIH's NIDCR
“And he said, ‘I can assure you that if you go through and become a good dentist, people will travel all over the world to find you. Chemists travel all over the world to find a job.”
That was the advice for Dr. Francis Arnold, who did become a dentist and helped establish the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, from his mentor, Dr. Thomas Hill, Professor of Clinical Oral Pathology and Therapeutics at Western Reserve University. The excerpt, and those that follow, come from Dr. Arnold's 1964 NIH oral history series. During the interviews, he discusses how his experiments and interests led him to become one of the four Public Health Service scientists who pioneered the study of fluorides and their effect on teeth.