| | | Professor Albert Richards
X-rays of Flowers
Albert G. Richards was born in Chicago in 1917. His training in photography began at an early age, because his father was a professional photographer. Formal training at the University of Michigan led to degrees in Chemical Engineering and Physics. In 1940, he joined the School of Dentistry staff as an instructor and focused his interest on x-ray photography and its application to dentistry by teaching himself dental radiography. By 1959 he was made Professor and in 1974 was named the Marcus L. Ward Professor of Dentistry, the first distinguished professorship at the University of Michigan’s dental school. His teaching career at Michigan spanned more than four decades.
A creative, inventive researcher and outstanding teacher, Professor Richards was known as one of the world's foremost authorities in the field of dental radiography. He earned many honors for his teaching and research, including establishment by the School of the Albert G. Richards Award for Excellence in Radiography, which is given annually to a student.
Among his many accomplishments were the invention of the recessed cone dental x-ray head (now found in many dental offices), being the first to use the electron microscope to see the microstructure of human teeth, and inventing the liquid mold technique for showing, with x-rays, the topography of surfaces. This technique has been applied in such diverse fields as fingerprinting and identification, botany, paleobotany, art and archeology. Other products of his inventive mind are dynamic tomography, a radiographic procedure that allows scientists to examine successively, an infinite number of thin layers of an object, and devising the Buccal Object Rule, a radiographic procedure for determining the relative location of objects hidden in the oral region. Before his death in 2008, he also held six patents on his inventions and was the author of more than 100 publications.
He and his wife, Marian, raised their five daughters in a beautiful house he built with his own hands. In retirement, he kept busy pursuing his avocation — the radiographing of flowers. Examples of his unusual and beautiful art have appeared in prominent magazines around the world, in museums, in encyclopedias, and on calendars.
Enter | |
LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint