The contributions of Edward H. Angle to dental public health.

The genius of Edward Hartley Angle, (1855-1930), the founder of the dental specialty of orthodontics, to create order from chaos in the study and treatment of positional discrepancies of the teeth, jaws and face advanced greatly the cause of dental public health. Angle's innovations that had the most public health impact were (1) his identification of dental occlusion, not simply tooth irregularity, as a prime concern, (2) his development of an uncomplicated classification system for occlusal conditions, (3) his introduction of prefabricated orthodontic appliances and (4) his framing of orthodontics as a dental specialty by organizing the world's first educational program to train orthodontists.