James Glidewell

Biography

 Without question the most prominent toothmaker on earth. His Glidewell Laboratories grew from a one-man operation he started in 1970 with a small ceramics furnace in his Southern California kitchen to the world’s largest dental lab, employing more than 4,300 people to make crowns, bridges, dentures, implants, prosthetic components and full-cast restorations. Early on, Navy vet Glidewell (he served in Southeast Asia during the war in Vietnam) set up an internal quality-control department that tested the raw materials and components he received from outside vendors. That grew into an R&D unit, which made Glidewell an industry leader through its invention of dozens of materials and lab services — BruxZir, Capture impression material, Transition crowns and bridges, and much, much more. The lab was an early adopter of CAD/CAM technology, and Glidewell’s research has led to vast improvements in intraoral and laboratory scanning, chairside milling and implant manufacturing.

Research Interest

 Dentistry