Contents - IADR/AADR

Who was this Professor of Biological Chemistry at Columbia University who took such an intensive
interest in dental research? This man was deemed to be so important in the evolution of dental research and
education that a separate biography of him is being written and will be published later. Thus only a very
concise—though adequate—resumé of his biographical attributes is provided in this volume.
William Gies was born in Reisterstown, Maryland, a century ago on 21 February 1872. As a young man
he received his B.S. degree from Gettysburg College in 1891 and earned his Ph.D. at Yale in 1897. At
Columbia University he served for many years as Professor and Chairman of the Biological Chemistry
Department. Aside from his academic duties, he devoted himself for nearly half a century to the advancement of
dentistry. William Gies lived a long and hardy life of eighty-four years, during which time he established
himself as one of the greatest benefactors of dentistry, although not a dentist himself. For his innumerable and
outstanding contributions, W. J. Gies received a great many honors from an appreciative dental profession.
One of the concepts that must have impressed Gies to a profound degree in the period 1910-18 was that
he, as a biochemist, had done research in the dental field with considerable initial success. He also had
collaborated with other basic science personnel in bacteriology, with some additional fruitful publications. Thus
the view must have developed in Gies' thinking that if an association could be organized, bringing together the
clinically-minded dentists and scientists who had some research interest in the dental field, there could emerge
from such a merger new ideas and approaches to many unsolved dental problems, which actually proved to be
more complex than Gies' first impression led him to believe.
Gies had by late 1918 consummated his plans for publishing the Journal of Dental Research as a
prestigious outlet for the scientific endeavors of competent investigators in the dental field. Even though the
Journal was ostensibly continuing the Journal of the Allied Dental Societies, it purported to be "a journal of
stomatology; devoted to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge pertaining to the mouth and teeth,
and to their relation to the body as a whole." (See also the chapter on the Journal of Dental Research, as well as
"The History of the Journal of Dental Research". 1 )
The Journal fulfilled the concept of merging basic scientists with men in dentistry only to the extent that
it disseminated their research findings. But Gies' vision also included the formation of an organization in which
there could be a meeting of minds on a person-to-person basis of all research-minded men to promote interest in
dental research. Thus he laid his plans on a rather grand scale, as he stated later in the Journal: "Believing that
such an association could best be formed as a federation of local societies, each to be in effect an autonomous
section of a national division of the international organization, and confident that it could be projected
effectually in the largest city in the United States, the writer corresponded or conferred orally with about one
hundred of the leading dentists in New York regarding the feasibility of the general plan and personnel of the
charter membership." 2 The prime meeting establishing the Association took place on Friday evening, 10
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR DENTAL RESEARCH (IADR) – THE FIRST FIFTY YEAR HISTORY PAGE 22