Contents - IADR/AADR

PREFACE
It seems fitting at this time to retrace the steps in the road by which we came through the last halfcentury.
Certainly the milestones and landmarks along the roadway have been emphasized; but imprints making
a barely discernible impression have merely been cited. The road was befogged and rugged in part, since
between the cobblestones some unrecorded facts and figures were unfortunately buried with certain deceased
members who never gave much thought to posterity. Nevertheless, the author searched diligently for some fifty
months to glean all significant information of the past fifty years, and then composed as comprehensively as
feasible what is hoped to be a chronicled document of some merit and of value for at least the next fifty years.
A significant aspect of the IADR history, I believe, is that it developed and therefore was written in the context
of the history of science in general and the history of medical science in particular, as the first few chapters
demonstrate.
This volume has in large measure been a truly international effort. The histories of the various Divisions,
Sections, and Groups have been compiled by the officers of their respective components wherever they existed
in the world. Moreover, a considerable amount of monetary support for the publication of this historic volume
came from commercial firms based in and operating from many different countries (as well as from the William
J. Gies Foundation for the Advancement of Dentistry and the IADR itself). Our Ad Hoc Committee on History
is composed of members also from several different parts of the globe but who communicated well, so the
Committee, and especially its chairman with his assistants, could make this published history dynamically
expository, accurate, and objective.
With this prefatory background, one can all the more emphatically state as foreground that it is only
through an understanding of history that we can improve our evaluation of the present and attempt to guide the
future with more enlightened and rational judgments.
FRANK J. ORLAND
Contents of this historical volume
compiled, written in part & edited
by Frank J. Orland
President of the IADR, 1971-72
at the time most manuscripts went to press
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR DENTAL RESEARCH (IADR) – THE FIRST FIFTY YEAR HISTORY
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