Pioneering Dental Genetics

Carl J. Witkop, Jr. was a specialist in inherited dental abnormalities. By 1956, studies of a tightly-knit Southern Maryland community convinced Witkop that dentinogenesis imperfecta was hereditary. In 1957 Witkop established the NIDR Section on Human Genetics, the first intramural genetics laboratory at NIH and edited the first textbook on dental genetics in 1962.