List of dentists

This is a list of dentists who have gained a degree of notability, particularly with regard to the history of those in the field.

Farmer at the dentist, Johann Liss, c. 1616–17

Real-life dentists

A

• Sam Aanestad – former Californian politician
• Michele Aerden - the first female president of the FDI World Dental Federation
• Harold Albrecht – Conservative Party of Canada politician
• Tomas Albrektsson – implant dentistry
• Henry Aldridge – politician from North Carolina
• Bill Allen – former president of the British Dental Association.
• Theodore C. Almquist – Brigadier General, US Air Force
• Edward Angle – father of orthodontics
• Arif Alvi – President of Pakistan
• Steve Arlin – became a dentist after playing Major League Baseball
• Gunadasa Amarasekara – Sinhala language writer
• Amalia Assur (1803–1889) first woman dentist in Sweden and possibly Europe.
• Rafiuddin Ahmed (dentist) – Indian dentist. founded the First Dental College of India
• Ana Bedran-Russo (Brazilian) Professor of Restorative Dentistry and Chair of the Department of General Dental Sciences in Restorative Dentistry at Marquette University School of Dentistry

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B

• Franz Bäke – Nazi Panzer ace
• Britt Baker – American professional wrestler currently performing with All Elite Wrestling; also has a full-time dental practice in Florida
• Charles Spence Bate – authority on crustaceans, five species are named for him
• William George Beers – established the Montreal Lacrosse Club and the Canada Journal of Dental Science
• Samuel Bemis – photography pioneer who became an eccentric recluse
• Hedvig Bensow - the first female dentist in Finland
• Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow – President of Turkmenistan
• André Bolhuis – Netherlands Field Hockey Player
• Daniel Bukantz – American fencer
• Paul Beresford – Conservative Party (UK) politician
• David Bernier – Secretary of State of Puerto Rico
• Greene Vardiman Black – invented a foot-driven dental drill and is classed as a father of modern dentistry
• Robert Blake – wrote, An Essay on the Structure and Formation of the Teeth in Man and Various Animals.
• Jan Boubli – French professional poker player and retired dentist
• Allan G. Brodie – American dentist who established the Prize Essay Award to promote research
• Edgar Buchanan – primarily known for his later career as an actor in shows like Petticoat Junction
• Julius Bruck – also designed a water-cooled diaphanoscopic instrument for translumination of the bladder via the rectum
• Martin van Butchell – Eccentric who put his wife's head on display at his home/practice after her death
• Donald J. Butz – U.S. Air Force Major General

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C

• Madeleine-Françoise Calais - the first female dentist to obtain a license as a master dentist from the Surgical Society of Paris
• Héctor José Cámpora – President of Argentina
• Billy Cannon – American football player and counterfeiter
• Georg Carabelli – court dentist to the Austrian Emperor who founded a clinic in the University of Vienna
• Gerald Cardinale – Republican Party (United States) politician with a dental office in Fort Lee, New Jersey
• James Carlisle – Governor-General of Antigua and Barbuda and member of the British Dental Association
• Margaret Caro - the first woman to be listed on the Dentists' Register of New Zealand
• Emma Gaudreau Casgrain - the first licensed female dentist in Canada
• Allen M. Christensen – American politician, Utah state senator
• Steve Christian – one of the Pitcairn Island sex abusers who did dentistry and was Mayor
• Dipak Chudasama – cricketer called "The Doc" because he's a qualified dentist
• Antoni Cieszyński – Polish head of a Stomatology Institute who was killed in the Massacre of Lwów professors
• Bernard J. Cigrand – possibly the "Father of Flag Day"
• Barney Clark – first recipient of the Jarvik 7 artificial heart
• Henry D. Cogswell – designed a method of securing dental plates, and in the temperance movement
• Frederick J. Conboy – secretary of the Ontario Dental Association and later mayor of Toronto
• Thomas Connelly – American dentist, works on teeth of celebrities
• Pierre Corbeil – Canadian politician, Quebec cabinet minister
• Dan Crane – American dentist/politician. Republican Party
• L. Adele Cuinet - pioneer American dental surgeon
• Gerry Curatola

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D

• Miles Dewey Davis, Jr. – ran for a seat on the State Legislature, NAACP member, and father to Miles Davis
• Bessie Delany – second black woman to be granted a dentistry license in New York state
• G. Walter Dittmar – former president of the American Dental Association
• Robert Dudley – actor
• Winfield Dunn – governor of Tennessee

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E

• Bill Emmerson – California State Assembly member who had a 22-year practice
• Thomas W. Evans – founded the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine

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F

• Sheila Faith – British politician of the Conservative party
• Pierre Fauchard – wrote the first complete scientific description of dentistry
• Polonia Sanz y Ferrer - the first female dentist in Spain
• Rabab Fetieh – first Saudi female orthodontist
• Charles Finnigan (1901–1967) – Surgeon Rear Admiral in the Royal Navy who was Honorary Dental Surgeon to the Queen from 1955 to 1960
• Alfred Fones (1869–1938) – came up with the name "dental hygienist" and founded that profession
• Sten Forshufvud – Swedish dentist who drew on his professional knowledge when theorizing about the poisoning of Napoleon
• Rosalie Fougelberg – Sweden's first female dentist after the profession was opened to women

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G

• Samir Ghawshah – Leader of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front
• Michael Glick – dean of SUNY Buffalo Dental School
• John Goodsir – wrote a noted essay on teeth
• Paul Gosar – American politician, representative in Congress from Arizona
• George Franklin Grant – first African-American professor at Harvard. He also invented a wooden golf tee
• Zane Grey – author of Riders of the Purple Sage and practicing dentist
• William Guy – Scottish dentist, creator of the Dental Act of 1921 in UK

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H

• John "Dok" Hager – cartoonist whose nickname came from his days as a dentist
• Jim Harrell, Jr. – past chairman of the American Dental Association Council on Governmental Affairs, and a Democratic Party (United States) politician
• Chapin A. Harris – co-founded the first dental school in the US, and possibly anywhere
• Gillette Hayden - served as the first female president of the American Academy of Periodontology
• Horace H. Hayden – architect of the American system of dental education & organizer of professional dentistry
• Heimir Hallgrímsson – Icelandic football player and manager, former manager of the Iceland men's national football team, has practiced dentistry throughout his playing and managing career.
• Harold G. Hillam – General Authority of LDS Church
• Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius - the first woman to take a full college course in dentistry, as Lucy Hobbs Taylor received credit for her time in dental practice before attending dental college
• John Henry "Doc" Holliday – Dentist and American Folklore icon, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral participant
• Matthew Hopcraft – public dentistry expert and MasterChef Australia contestant
• Les Horvath – winner of Heisman Trophy who became a dentist
• Edward Hudson – eminent dentist when the field was new, he is also noted for making fake "ruins"
• Lester C. Hunt – Democratic Party (United States) politician who served in the Dental Corps in World War I.(Committed suicide)

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I

• Francis Brodie Imlach – Scottish dental pioneer. First dentist to use chloroform as an anaesthetic

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J

• Cheddi Jagan – former president of Guyana
• Fatima Jinnah – sister of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and "Mother of the Nation" in Pakistan
• Emeline Roberts Jones - the first woman to practice dentistry in the United States
• Minnie Evangeline Jordon - established the first dental practice in the United States devoted only to pediatric patients, also published the first textbook on pedodontics, titled Operative Dentistry for Children

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K

• Erhard Keller – speed skater at the Winter Olympic Games and professional dentist for over thirty years
• Ryan Kohlmeier – former professional baseball player in Major League Baseball
• Michael Krop – Democratic Party (United States) politician with a school named for him
• Peter Kunter – football player for Eintracht Frankfurt

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L

• Gordon R. Lawson -New Zealand rugby player
• Donald Leake – dentist, inventor of the alloplastic tray, and oboist
• Charles Goodall Lee – first licensed dentist of Asian ancestry in the United States of America. He was a founder of Chinatown, Oakland, California, and helped fund the founding of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance
• Robert Lee – African-American emigrant to Ghana
• Faith Sai So Leong, also called Sai So Yeong - the first Chinese-American woman to graduate from a school of dentistry and become a dentist in the United States
• Petra Lie - the first female dentist in Norway
• Hardy Limeback – proponent who led water fluoridation efforts in Canada
• Göran Lindblad – Swedish politician
• John Linder – American politician, representative in Congress
• Lilian Lindsay the first licensed female dentist in Britain
• Jim Lonborg – in the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame, he is now a dentist
• Mahlon Loomis – known for a wireless telegraph patent
• Jiko Luveni – Fijian dentist who works on combatting AIDS
• Alexander Gordon Lyle – United States Navy dentist and World War I Medal of Honor recipient and first military dentist to be promoted to Flag rank (Admiral/General).

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M

• Bernie Machen – president of University of Florida and University of Utah
• Edward Maynard – treated United States Congressmen and in 1888 he held the chair of Dental Theory and Practice at the National university in Washington. (Better known for firearms inventions)
• Stanley McInnis – Canadian who moved a motion at a meeting of the Canadian Dental Association to adopt a code of ethics, also a politician
• Markus Merk – FIFA referee from Germany
• Ramón Mestre – former Governor of Córdoba
• Frederick B. Morrehead – helped save the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry
• Jack Miller – "racing dentist" who was in the Indianapolis 500
• Bill Mlkvy – former professional basketball player for the Philadelphia Warriors
• Mike Morton – football player

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N

• John Newbrough – of Oahspe
• Phil Northrup – Spiritualist author
• Charlie Norwood – served in the Dental Corps and was a member of the United States Congress
• Hessam Nowzari – founder of the Taipei Academy of Reconstructive Dentistry in Taiwan
• Frederick Bogue Noyes – organized the first course on dental pathology in the United States

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O

• Giovanni Battista Orsenigo – monk/dentist
• Weedon E. Osborne – United States Navy dentist and World War I Medal of Honor recipient
• Rodrigues Ottolengui – Sephardic Jewish dental pioneer who was one of the first to use X-rays (also wrote mystery novels)

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P

• Ron Packard – Navy Dental Corps and a private practice, he was later on the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations
• Painless Parker – dentist and huckster
• William Paulus – swimmer
• Guillermo Peschard – Mexican founder of the UJED School of Dentistry
• Steve Petryk – curler
• Rudy Perpich – American dentist/politician of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party
• William Albert Pommer – Canadian politician
• Fritz Pfeffer – dentist who hid with Anne Frank

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Q

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R

• Bessie Raiche – aviation pioneer
• Earl W. Renfroe – broke barriers for African Americans, headed a dentistry department
• Charles Richard – Canadian politician
• Jessica Rickert - the first female American Indian dentist in America
• Ida Rollins - the first African-American woman to earn a dental degree in the United States, which she earned from the University of Michigan

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S

• Harry Sagansky – gangster trained in dentistry who had a practice
• Ben L. Salomon – American military dentist and World War II Medal of Honor recipient
• Hugo Sánchez – Mexican football player
• Isaac Schour – former dean of the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry
• Terry Schmidt – football player
• Chen Shih-chung - Taiwanese politician, the director of Taipei City Dentists Association
• Helen Rulison Shipley – first female dentist in Nevada
• Jeanne Sinkford - the first female dean of an American dental school (Howard University, School of Dentistry)
• Mike Simpson – US representative from Idaho
• Joseph Slogan – Canadian politician
• John Smith (dentist) – founder of the Edinburgh school of dentistry
• Mark Spitz – Olympic swimmer (was actually accepted to dental school, but competed in the Olympics instead)
• Charles Stent – dentist who advanced denture making
• Charles H. Strub – sports entrepreneur
• Jon Sudbø – Norwegian dentist linked to a case of scientific misconduct

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T

• Lucy Hobbs Taylor – first woman to graduate from dental school (Ohio College of Dental Surgery in 1866)
• José Roberto Magalhães Teixeira – Brazilian politician
• Mohamed Khir bin Toyo – Malaysian politician
• Joseph Trumpeldor – Zionist national hero
• Charles Murray Turpin – Republican politician in the United States House of Representatives
• Carol I. Turner - the first female Chief of the U.S. Navy Dental Corps

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U

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V

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• Mahesh Verma – Indian prosthodontist and the Director and Principal of Maulana Azad Institute of Dental Sciences

W

• Harold Gladstone Watkin (1882–1965) – orthodontist
• John Weisbeck – Canadian politician
• Thomas Bramwell Welch – founder of Welch's
• Caroline Louise Josephine Wells - the first Canadian woman to graduate from any dental school
• Horace Wells – pioneered the use of anesthesia in dentistry, later committed suicide
• Marie Imogene Williams – first African American female dentist to graduate from Howard University's dental school, in 1896
• Gerrit Wolsink – motocross racer

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X

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Y

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• W. J. Younger – American dentist who performed some of the earliest and most groundbreaking research in the field of periodontology

Z

• Leonie von Meusebach–Zesch – pioneer female dentist who practiced in Texas, Alaska, Arizona and California

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Fictional dentists

• The aforementioned Britt Baker is routinely introduced in All Elite Wrestling as "Dr. Britt Baker, DMD", reflecting her real-life dental practice.
• Jeremy Hillary Boob (voiced by Dick Emery) – from Yellow Submarine.
• Matthew Brock – from NewsRadio. (Although he gave it up to work in radio and is only seen practicing in one episode)
• Dr. Carey – from Stuart Little
• Dr. Dillingham – from Prostho Plus.
• Walt Duncan – head of the household at the centre of comic strip Zits.
• Dr. Tariq Faraj – from Oz.
• Dr. Phoebus Farb – from The Little Shop of Horrors
• Dr. Barry Farber – Rachel's fiancé whom she left at the altar from Friends.
• The unnamed W.C. Fields character in the 1932 short film The Dentist.
• Bob Fish – a title character in Bob and Margaret.
• Wendell and Monica Wilkins: originally only named as Mr. and Mrs. Granger, parents of Hermione Granger – from the Harry Potter novels.
• Julia Harris – from the film Horrible Bosses.
• Ben Harper – from British sitcom My Family.
• Brock Hart – from the TV series Reba.
• Hermey the Elf – became a dentist in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys, prior was an elf.
• Jesse W. Heywood (Don Knotts) – from the 1968 comedy film The Shakiest Gun in the West, a remake of Bob Hope's The Paleface (1948).
• Orson Hodge – from Desperate Housewives.
• Carl Howell (John Stamos) – from the TV series Glee.
• Jin Shun-an (Yu Jin) - from the TV series My Tooth Your Love  [zh]
• Nonoko Kishii – from The Dragon Dentist.
• Sheldon Kornpett (Alan Arkin) – Manhattan dentist in the 1979 comedy film The In-Laws.
• Capt. Walter Koskiusko Waldowski, "Painless Pole" – in MASH.
• Dr. Molar Fox, resident dentist of Lake Hoohaw in the Playhouse Disney show PB&J Otter.
• Bernard Nadler – from the TV series Lost.
• Zen'nosuke Maki – from the TV series Manpuku.
• Nicholas "Oz" Oseransky – from The Whole Nine Yards and The Whole Ten Yards.
• John Patterson – in For Better or For Worse.
• Peter "Painless" Potter (Bob Hope) – from the 1948 comedy film The Paleface. Bumbling dentist who was fooled into believing that he was a deadly gunfighter.
• Lincoln Rice DDS – from Broad City.
• Jerry Robinson – orthodontist who shared the office suite on the Bob Newhart Show
• Miss Root – dentist in the book Demon Dentist by David Walliams
• Dr. Frank Sangster – in Novocaine.
• Orin Scrivello, D.D.S. – Little Shop of Horrors, played by Steve Martin in the film adaptation
• Gen. Tarsal – from Adventure Time episode "Dentist"
• Dr. Teeth – of The Muppets, revealed to be Gerald Teeth Jr DDS in The Muppets Mayhem
• Tina Teeth – Dr Teeth's mother in The Muppets Mayhem
• Dr. Charley Shanowski (Ted McGinley) – from Hope & Faith
• Eugene Sutphin (Sam Waterston) – from Serial Mom.
• Christian Szell – from William Goldman's Marathon Man, later a movie by John Schlesinger
• Noah Werner (Alan Tudyk) – Suburgatory (TV series)
• Tim Whatley (Bryan Cranston) and Mr. Abbot (Robert Wagner) – from the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, Whatley alleged to be an insincere convert to Judaism.
• Julian Winston – adulterer in the play ) and its film adaptation
• Dr. Wolfe – from The Simpsons
• Isaac Yankem, DDS – professional wrestler portrayed by Glenn Jacobs, now known as Kane, in the WWF

Other

• Greeeen – four member Japanese pop music band consisting entirely of dentists who studied at Ohu University in Fukushima