H. Trendley Dean Memorial Award for Research in Epidemiology and Dental Caries

¹ University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, Minneapolis, Minnesota

I am pleased to join the company of Francis Arnold, Roy Blayney, and John Knutson who earlier received the H. Trendley Dean Memorial Award. It may be that I am near the last of the Dean Awardees who knew this remarkable, interesting, and warm-hearted man. Accordingly, I thought it appropriate for me to relate to the Association something of Doctor Dean's personality and of his work.

Doctor Dean served as a captain in the Army Dental Corps with a field artillery unit in World War I and, as a result, he became imbued with the ideals and traditions of the old Army. His devotion to duty, his unquestioning patriotism and his unhesitating acceptance of responsibility were a natural part of his character. Nevertheless, these attributes were, I am convinced, enhanced and formalized by his continued military associations.

Doctor Dean was first commissioned in the Public Health Service in 1921. Ten years later he was assigned to duty in dental research. I think it probable that Doctor Dean's first paper, published in June. 1930, while he was a clinician at the Staten Island Marine Hospital, caused Surgeon General Cumming to recognize his talents in investigation. The validity of the Surgeon General's judgment was amply confirmed over the 22-year period in which Doctor Dean developed dental research in the Public Health Service from near nothing into that which we now know as the entire enterprise of the National Institute of Dental Research.

Doctor Dean early gave his attention to the epidemiology of mottled enamel. The second paper of his career, published in February, 1933, was on this subject. His further observations showed conclusively the beneficial role of water-borne fluoride in reducing the susceptibility of teeth to decay. His utilization of these extensive experiments of Nature has furnished the most cogent and convincing support for the programs of controlled water fluoridation now practiced in 3,147 communities in the United States.

Experiments were carried out with rats which showed the role of the skeleton in controlling and regulating plasma fluoride concentration and the nearly equal participation of the mineral of various bones in removing fluoride from body fluids.