Dr. Theodor Rosebury: grandfather of modern oral microbiology.

hearing the spirochete story, and realizing that we would be in Chicago and that Rosebury was living in Chicago, Irwin decided to arrange for a visit to Rosebury's home. The visit was to include my wife, Dr. Solon A. Ellison and Dr. Mandel (both of whom had been Rosebury's students at Columbia Dental School), and me. At that time, Dr. Ellison was the director and Chair of the Oral Biology Department at SUNY Buffalo (Emmings, 1999). I had heard that, since his retirement, Rosebury had dedicated himself to writing, cabinetmaking, and music. I had heard that he excelled in each area, and had become a consummate cabinetmaker, a renowned writer, and an exceptionally gifted flutist. It was with great anticipation that I arrived at the house of this revered microbiologist. Rosebury greeted his students, Mandel and Ellison, warmly. Dr. Mandel introduced my wife and me to Dr. Rosebury and reported that Rosebury had known several members of my wife's family and that her uncle Sam had worked in his laboratory. Rosebury expressed fond memories of Sam and the research they had done together and invited us to come up to his attic, where he had his reference library. It was truly remarkable to see the extent of his reference card catalogue, considering that he had retired from academics several years before. The card catalogue consisted of thousands of meticulously labeled 3 x 5 index cards in a space equivalent to a small university library. He then located a card that catalogued an article he had published with my wife's uncle in the Journal of Dental Research, entitled "Studies of lactobacilli in relation to caries in rats. II. Attempt to immunize rats on caries producing diets against lactobacilli" (Rosebury et al., 1934). I later discovered that caries vaccine scientists refer to this article as one of the first papers that attempted to document a vaccine developed to a caries-producing organism. Ted Rosebury was born in London on August 10, 1904. His family moved to the United States when he was six, and he became a naturalized citizen when he was 12 years old. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his DDS in 1928. In his own words, while in his junior year of dental school, he and a fellow dental student "read and studied (Bulletin Number Nineteen-A survey of dental education in the United States and Canada-conducted by …